6 - The Blog

Reading back over the story so far it becomes slightly apparent to my occasionally self deprecating slant that it is a tad opinionated. There are a few almost pompous assertions regarding, say, the wonders of wood, the gloriousness of separate kitchens, the difficultness of kit home company employees, and just how shit hot we must be for scoring a house that matches everything we wanted. With this in mind I feel a qualifier or two needs to be thrown in here.

Before I started writing this blog I knew that we had decided upon the house, it is to be moved in another month from today. This fact may have unconsciously played a heavy hand in editing the telling of the tale. When given the opportunity I think we all have a tendency to become happier with our current lot. Certain aspects of it tend to be held in higher and higher regard as time goes by. We get used to things. For us in the beginning, we really did not know exactly what we wanted in a house. I remember us wanting all sorts of things such as half the house buried in a hill with grass and meadow flowers growing on the roof, walls of glass taking in every view, a completely outdoor kitchen, a tree or two growing up through the middle of the house, and a series of separate buildings for each room with a courtyard linking them. There were so many things that we wanted to incorporate into one house that in many ways we were paralysed. It was kind of like the hundreds of salivating shoppers pushing through the door of a Boxing Day Myer stocktake sale and all getting stuck.

Deciding to relocate a house provided much needed relief. We could focus our interest on one style of house and make it work, intellectually, for our purposes. All the other ‘dream’ houses would remain as such. Our limited budget and circumstances have dictated a housing direction that we have fortunately become very accustomed to and that accustomedness provides the optimistic thread holding this blog together.

So all the elements that I have passed critical judgment over such as plasterboard, aluminium framed windows, carpet and the rest are not really to my taste but if pushed, I could make them work for me. The most important thing is achieving the correct house orientation and including other power saving devices and features. Air conditioning is a big hate of mine and I make no apologies for that. It is unnecessary, when accompanied by good house design, especially for the climate we enjoy here. If I was in the tropical north things would be different, but we chose to be in this climate so our heating and cooling requirements would be minimal.

5 - The House

As I have already mentioned, the house is in great condition. It has housed only two owners since it was built in 1926 by a man for his wife. Fifteen years ago it had enjoyed some restoration and renovation work. One of the results of this was the bathroom being relocated from its original position on the back deck to one of the three bedrooms. This gave the house only two bedrooms and a large but lovely bathroom. The old deck bathroom became a large laundry and storage area.

The Kitchen
When seeing the above layout, some friends of ours suggested knocking out the wall between the kitchen and lounge or at least cutting a large opening in it. This got me thinking. I like the idea of the separate kitchen. There has been quite a push lately in house design circles to open everything up. The dining area is merged with lounge, media, entertainment and what not and over to one side, as if on stage, is the kitchen ensconced in island bench. Perhaps the thinking is that the cook or dish washer can stay part of the party as they quietly toil away piping up occasionally with witty observations in tune with the topics at hand. For all other times those in the kitchen can talk with family as they watch TV in the other corner or watch it themselves or simply discuss various matters of everyone’s busy day as the evening meal is prepared. I guess all this is a nice idea. Here comes the ‘however’ subtly signposted by the ‘I guess’. However, I kind of think you lose the purpose and function of rooms this way. A separate kitchen complete with an area for dining is a very nice thing. It is the kitchen – the place for creating meals, storing food, sprouting sprouts, rising bread, learning about flavours, imparting a sense of interest and passion within children and lots of messy experimentation. To be able to sit right there and eat in the place that the food was prepared, with the leftovers bubbling away on the stove at arms reach, the smells of dozens of herbs and spices wafting around and the sights of jars and jars of dried beans and the like, gives a nice understanding of the origin of the meal and contributes to the richness of its eating.

So the fact that the small kitchen in this house has a little dining nook, with a view to the prospective veggie gardens, is perfect for us.The walls will act as vertical storage, like a library of culinary delights. The kitchen benches will need some work as they are fairly minimal. The previous owners had a large rustic looking stand alone bench in the middle and a cupboard on the back wall. We are hoping to simply have a bench and cook top on that wall and no bench in the middle, the room is too small.

The Living Room
Having a separate small living room works for us too. It will become the centre of the house and a place for relaxing, talking, reading, playing and creating. The name ‘living’ sums these activities up nicely as there is an active element to them. We will have to place the computer somewhere in this room though there will be no television. I have recently welcomed a new TV free chapter in my life. Not that it made up a large part before but it was there and it didn’t feel right. Its absence is producing things during a time usually devoted to passive consumption. This blog is an example, so to the collection of hand made clothes worn daily by my daughter at the hands of my partner’s busy hands.

The Bedrooms
There are two and this is fine for now. Should the need arise to fill a third we will move the bathroom back to its original location and convert the space it was in back in to a bedroom. The one issue with bedrooms in an old house is the lack of inbuilt cupboards. We will have to come up with solutions to this. For us it will probably be a combination of old stand-alone wardrobes and maybe some clothes racks hanging from the roof at eye level.

The Bathroom
This will be half in the laundry, marked 'toilet', and half in the house as in the design. The claw foot bath that comes with the house will stay where it is for the time being. However, we are going to install a composting toilet in the laundry which will probably become a bathroom in the future. Having the composting toilet out there will make it easier to get in under it to replace the full chambers. Also it seems nicer to get down to that sort of business away from the more delicate living areas of the house. Flushing toilets have brought the whole affair closer and even into people’s bedrooms. When you think about it, this is a bit weird. It has not been decided at this stage but we will probably get the toilet from Nature-Loo. There will be more on that later when I write of our on-site waste treatment systems.

Orientation

The house is nearly perfectly orientated to suit the need for passive solar design for our site. The house has a longer east west axis and is narrow enough to benefit from cross flow breezes. The verandas at each end of the house will act as a buffer keeping the sun from hitting the house. Of course, bedroom 1 will cop it from the west in the afternoon, however we plan to plant some trees over that side of the house and perhaps insulate the wall. The large windows in the living room will benefit from northern sun and the area just outside these will work as a sun trap in the cooler months where we can grow things that aren't keen on getting cold.

1 - The Back Story

Since purchasing a 15 acre block of land in the beautiful Tweed Valley in northern New South Wales (Australia) some five and half years ago my mind has seemed to constantly be entertaining thoughts of what type of house to build here. No “Owner Builder’ magazine crossing my path was left unopened, no related website was left unclicked, no picture of anything habitat design related was left unscrutinised and no new approach to ‘green housing’ was left unconsidered. Two years ago my partner and I moved onto the block and into the barn shaped tin shed that was already here. As we busied ourselves with making the shed livable, the pressure eased on the house front. That is until our daughter was born ten months ago. Suddenly we realised that it would be nice to have a house before she was walking about.

Our housing requirements are humble and reflect the very reason we moved from the city to take up residence here. We wanted the house to be as sustainable as possible and so it would need to incorporate passive solar design and solar power, and of course, by virtue of our lack of town water, on site rain water collection and waste management. We hate the idea of having a house that requires air conditioning so ours won’t. We will utilise the cooling breezes with properly placed windows and minimise the heating effects of the sun by house orientation, insulation and eaves.

So as one can see the basic plans were simple. However, due to the fact that my partner and I have strong opinions on what we like in houses, other preferences would need to be factored into this basic outline. These come in varying degrees of ‘must have’ and could be reluctantly compromised upon if pushed. Because they each require an explanation, they have one below.

The site chosen for the house

High Ceilings
My partner and I spent most of our twenties not knowing of each other. We lived separately with ex-loves or in share house arrangements in a collection of rented inner city Brisbane houses. Whether they were workers’ cottages or larger Queenslanders they all had one rather impressionable feature in common – high ceilings. Being in a room whose ceiling height is often double your own is quite a nice thing and not easily forgotten, especially when you are considering committing yourself to purchasing a house that will take you a large portion of your working life to pay for. You kind of want ‘nice things’ in it. Of course there is the added benefit of high ceilings making the house cooler so their inclusion in any building project for us is almost a given.

No Plasterboard Internal Linings
I really do not like plasterboard internal wall linings. As children we were warned against marking their clinical finish when our lives got too close. “Mind the wall you’ll damage it/mark it/ruin the entire house’s resale value” – as if it were some canary in a cage gauging the well maintained history of a house to a would be buyer. I have always thought it odd that the internal walls of a house needed to be taken care of in this way. Life is way too short to curb exaggerated limb movements, contain inquisitive grubby hands or to always keep outdoor sports strictly outdoors. Houses are for living not minding. Bear in mind that perhaps my particular experiences may not be that common, however, for me they formed a strong foundation with which further plasterboard negatives could rest.

Again, like high ceilings, once an alternative to plasterboard was experienced my aversion grew. Older wooden houses sporting V J tongue and groove lined walls provided a secure comforting back drop to the dizzying jumble that was my twenties. Walls and ceilings that you could put nails and screws in held up all sorts of heavy junk. Disco balls, push bikes, retro pod like recliners, complex clothes racks, big stereo speakers and countless chunky framed pictures were all supported by these wonderful neat planks of wood. Their durability easily absorbed many an overbalanced house party reveler, bouncing them back into the throws of the dance (loungeroom) floor within the blink of an eye.

Wooden lined walls have a certain substance and feel to them. There is a real richness and depth to their presence. Plasterboard lining gives me the complete opposite sensation – one of temporary brittleness, sort of like living in a chalk cell or a flimsy stage set.

Plasterboard is used so extensively because it is cheap, money wise, to produce. However, I have recently discovered that this production carries high inherent energy costs making it not a very sustainable option for the discerning home builder.

Wooden Windows
Another important consideration in the house is window frames. Not a lot of options here in the way of materials used but fortunately we love wooden framed windows. We do not like aluminum framed windows. I have never understood their widespread inclusion in brick veneer houses when they look so bad with brick. Bricks give a solid earthy feel to a house, while aluminum windows detract from this effect with a look of flimsy fabrication. For me wooden framed windows suit so many applications in building. Their styles are endless.

The trouble can be that they are expensive. To overcome this we hope to include some recycled wooden windows with the added benefit of them often being more interesting.

Wooden Floors
People buy carpet. They carefully select the colour and texture they want, running their hands over the sample piece, perhaps even rubbing their cheek against its softness. They then pay a substantial amount of money for it, take it home, put it on the floor – the one place where it is next to impossible to take care of, and then walk on it. An endless cycle of precautions, cleaning, fussing, cursing and resenting seemingly trivial actions of family members begins. An un-winnable war against gravity is waged. I can’t see why people bother when there are other options?

Hard surfaced floor coverings are the only ones worth considering for me. Wood looks the best. So wood it is. Slate comes in a very close second and should the house be built on a concrete slab, would probably be the pick.

"I'm gonna surround myself in wood! Wood Jerry! Wood!" (Kramer)

So there it is, a few basic requirements complimented by a few taste requirements. Meeting all these should not be too hard…should it? Next step is to nut out a budget, decide on a style and building technique, consider size requirements and think about a floor plan.