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Category: <span>Building</span>

Category: Building

Below are the latest Building / Rammed Earth / Owner Builder articles.

To see our journey from the start, scroll down to the bottom of the page for the first articles.

Below are the latest Building / Rammed Earth / Owner Builder articles.

To see our journey from the start, scroll down to the bottom of the page for the first articles.

When FiRE nearly takes the lot…

Yet another near disaster: today this wire started to smoulder and caught fire during one of the hottest days of the summer, though we didn’t know it.  We could smell the burning plastic during the day and looked high and low for the source. I exhausted my search after four attempts and the temperature of the day started to drop. The next morning, I went back into the power shed and started to look again.  This time, I had the thought to pray…  I kid you not, within seconds something caught my eye – burn marks and in the shadows, …

Building | for thought   | |

Concrete Benches? An intro

Thinking of doing concrete benches? Read this first! I often joke with people that when doing the rammed earth, we would be mixing large amounts just adding ingredients by hand and eye – no real measurements – then when we came to the concrete benches we were literally using drug scales and measuring 20 different products at 0.1g accuracy!! Talk about chalk and cheese. Side note: Just in case you were wondering – yes the scales used to be used for drugs. Something else Jesus has redeemed 😂. I was amazed that there was an actual legitimate use for them …

Building | Concrete / GFRC   | |

Racing to beat winter

We had thought it would be easy – but due to sickness, finances and a number of other issues, it is now going to be very difficult to get a bathroom sorted for hot showers before winter… We have running water (mostly) for doing dishes, though the main plumbing for waste water needs to go right where the north verandah will be. To make things easier and cheaper in the long run, the verandah had to be next!

Concrete / GFRC | Rammed Earth   |

Laying our concrete kitchen bench top!

Thanksgiving Day / Thankful Thursday 22/11/18 A journal of the day we finally laid our main kitchen concrete (GFRC) concrete bench top. Due to it’s size, a friend was sending some workers who specialise in concrete coatings to help. It would be a different way of doing GFRC from what we had previously done. A huge day to say the least, but as always, we wanted to put God first. He was the only reason we are alive let alone made it so far on this building journey. I awoke reading an article of an American man (John Allen Chau) …

Concrete / GFRC | Jesus Time   | |

Another windy night..

A little damage form the storm last night – and an opportunity to bless people in the community:  Some heavy winds (and hail) last night led to a number of things flying past the house with lots of crashes and bangs. We ran around picking up bins and building materials that had come loose – in gusts it was hard to stay upright – crazy! This morning we found it had turned our large trampoline into a kite. It was discovered near the edge of our property in a crushed mess with about 150m path of destruction behind it…. so thankful …

Building | Personal

How to get in your wife’s good books (I hope)!

It was coming up to Sharmini’s 16th Christian Birthday, the floors should be finished, could we manage to surprise her?  For those who know Sharmini, you know that she is an incredibly kind, loving and generous person. She is always looking for ways to bless others and one way that she has planned to do that once the house is finished is by doing High Teas for ladies. She has often purchased tea sets or saucers at garage sales and started storing them in the shed. I knew once we had done the first one, the excitement of it would be …

Composting Toilets / Grey Water | Marriage / Sig Other   |

Building Progress: A Month of Serving

The last few weeks have been CRAZY with a capital K. Often we have deadlines with working on the house, jobs or building, however this last 6 weeks or so has been mainly about entertaining and blessing people – birthdays, Christmas, New Years and more. Today, being my birthday I would have liked to have had time to reflect, but this is the best I could manage: 

Building   | | |

Jesus – Foundation for Life…and building!

Topic: What makes a good foundation? Scripture(s): Psalm 118:22, Psalm 127:1-2 Today we had our compaction test…after a huge week with many trials and joys, the results were not what we expected. Notes: The Bible verses are included below, but it is more beneficial to read any verses from an actual Bible – or better yet, have the children read from their own. We recommend the NLT (New Living Translation – Tyndale Publishers) which is easy to read but very accurate. If you don’t have one please let us know as we may be able to help. Description We have …

Building | Concrete / GFRC | Faith | Jesus Time  

Composting Toilet Base

Today we battled the rain to finish the base for the composting toilets. While we never planned to have a base under the toilets, a series of ‘coincidences’ led to a rather remarkable outcome… We have opted to use composting toilets in the building we are working on. They use no water, the by products are safer and better for the ground and the set up cost is exponentially lower than septics / sewerage. The problem for composting toilets often comes due to lack of planning. The cost effective units need a space under the slab to sit under where …

Building | Composting Toilets / Grey Water | Concrete / GFRC   |

When will it end?

  The Big M (4) – ‘dad will we have finished building the house by the time I’m the Jman’s age(9)? Doubling your age to the completion of a project is huge…5 years is a looong time to a 4 year old! I know how he feels – at the end of a long hard week with virtually no progress in building, health and financial issues and an ever approaching deadline it can seem impossible. At times it is hard to cling to hope through the sickness, pain and trials. But I’m finding more and more, despite the current circumstances …

Building | Soul Food   |

A property in Sovereign Hill?

We had always loved the area around Guilderton. We regularly camped on the beach in the area and tried to whenever possible. So we looked at looked for properties in the area. From Woodridge to Guilderton to Redfield Park to Sovereign Hill to Seabird and further east – to Gingin, Beermullah are beyond. There was a big jump from large farm type properties to the smaller semi suburban lots.Woodridge was well established but we couldn’t afford it. Sovereign Hill was smaller lots (2.5 acres) and scrubby like bush, Guilderton was more holiday tpe housesout of our price range. Redfield Park …

Building   | | |