So we’ve been planning to build a house for a while now, setting deadlines and breaking them before setting them again.

When we moved up here we wanted to soak ourselves in the environment, learn the seasons and use this knowledge to build a suitable home on the property.

Of course, it seems pretty simple to say “I’m going to build a house” when I have limited experience, but I’ve never had a huge amount of experience in anything that I’ve done before throwing myself into it. Learning fast and also from my mistakes before things turn ugly makes life interesting to say the least – but I’ve done a fair bit of research on housing and think that we are making all of the right compromises for us.

Some of the main features we have planned are:

• Orientation – having a north facing house so that winter sun enters the windows for warmth and the summer sun is blocked by eaves.
• Materials – using rendered straw bale infill walls with have huge insulation properties (an approximate “R” rating of 9).
• Using a slab for thermal mass and (combined with the walls) bushfire protection.
• Open plan living without internal walls downstairs.
• Outdoor living – we currently spend a lot of time outside and want to continue this with large decking and indoor/outdoor spaces. This means that some of the decking will be sheltered from the weather and used as a year round living area.

The plan is for a loft design with high pitched gable and the second floor in the roof space for better summer heat dissipation, better use of space, cost effectiveness and a unique cottage feel. The design also means that the house can be built by a minimum number of people and is something that Meg and I can accomplish together, with a little help from friends and the occasional tradie.

Last January’s deadline for submitting plans to council died a quiet death and the deadline was reborn mid-year.

Having a third wind a month or so again, I obtained the paperwork from the council and have started going through it. This means learning new terms, having to expand TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) that are used everywhere and generally starting to manage the project.

So the check lists have started in earnest now. Meg has contacted the company that will do the soil testing and I’m contacting some earth movers for advice and vague costing.

It is a little strange that the project has costs associated with it that are dependent on the cost of the building, but the cost of the building is a variable thing. For example, materials costs may fluctuate, some parts of the build may use tradespeople or not. I think that the variability in this figure could be 50% of the cost of the build.

We’ll keep our eyes open for pitfalls, but expect that we’ll fall into a few anyway. But then isn’t that all part of the fun?

After a few weeks waiting for parts, Penfold the ride on mower is back up and mowing again.

It took a few goes to get the right bit, but we got there in the end with the correct part being delivered after a few false starts.

Installation wasn’t too hard and after pumping up the front tyres, filling with fuel and with a quick check over the machine we were slowly putting around again.

Even though I’ve spent hours on previous weekends pushing the standard Victa around some of the more important parts, the grass has grown very high in just three weeks. Below the shed I couldn’t even see the difference between where I would normally mow and where I haven’t mown before and just made it up again.

A few hours on the mower combined with a wander around with the brushcutter has me feeling a little better about the fire risk as well as being able to see snakes more easily.

I also caught up with a neighbour who has some lambs to put in our stock paddock again. I wonder if we’ll be able to see them though the grass when they first go in?

I received a phone call out of the blue this morning with an offer of some more fish for our pond.

Whether it was meant to happen or not, I’d been thinking about getting some friends for “Guinea Pig” – the original and possibly very lonely gold fish.

“Guinea Pig” was so named after his or her status as the first experimental fish in the pond, and the experimental procedure stated that no fish food was to be supplied.

More than a year later, the big guy was getting bigger, so the experiment was deemed a success. Living on algae and bits of the pond plants and maybe the odd mosquito larvae worked and this phone call was just what was needed to enter phase two.

After collecting the three new fish, I returned home with the esky and plonked them into the pond. The fish were a little stunned and I stood quietly watching them for movement.

The movement came from behind me and I slowly turned to find a 1.5 metre long brown snake in the adjacent garden bed, spanning the width with head over one side and tail the other.

The snake sensed my movement and quickly slithered off, leaving me to contemplate a few things with fast beating heart.

The fish didn’t seem to notice and it was time to get some “real” work (read: paid work) done, so I headed to the car.

Heading away from the vegie patch down the drive, I spotted the snake about 30 metres away. I still can’t get over just how quickly they can cover ground when they want too…

Plans for the house have been coming along well and Meg and I have been working hard on decisions for the house; what to build, where to build it, how am I going to be able to do it etc etc.

Raph came up to visit and as part of his Uni holidays, he spent a while on the spade and crowbar.

A couple of “lightening strikes” saw some trees fall over near the proposed house site, so we thought that we should get rid of the stumps.

How hard could it be? Surely we could just dig them out?

The Blue gums around here tend to grow with multiple trunks sprouting from a base and trimming the trunks down was easy enough. The plan was to dig around the base and hopefully under some roots before lighting a decent bonfire to burn the rest away.

This sounds great in theory, but the first fire that we lit went for three days…

The end of the first stump was the second burning and coincided with the first camp oven chook. After burning for a few hours, the monster chook (over 3Kg) was stuffed with lemons and onions, seasoned with pepper, salt, garlic and chilli and placed on a bed of lemon peel in the camp oven.

Raph dug a huge hole, about a foot and a half deep next to the fire for the camp oven. We backfilled with red hot coals from the base of the stump to about the halfway mark before putting the camp oven in and completely covering it over the handle – even though the handle was pointing straight up.

Three hours later, we hooked out the camp over and had the juiciest roast chicken with gravy and steamed veg picked from the garden.

With the first stump pretty much finished, Raph and I started on the second after a night of a neighbour’s great cleanskin Cab Savs. (Maybe a mistake?)

The blisters came thick and fast as we tackled the second stump and consumed what felt like our bodyweight in cool rainwater.

Pa came over in time to lend a hand and we dug up to a metre down around the stump. Not a bad effort for three hours on the spade.

The fire was big, but safe as the hole was surrounded with dirt, stopping the wind from blowing embers across the ground.

A heap of wood and days later the stump had taken a battering. Maybe one more burning and it will be gone.

It sometimes seems like we are taking small steps in the process of building the house, but each step gets us closer.