I'm so sorry it's been so long since I updated you all, I know how keen you are to keep track lol.
My wonderful site supervisor threw in the towel at the end of the roof build and handed the job to me which has really slowed down the work schedule as I seem to get easily distracted by anything!
Darren has taken the position of labourer although he still keeps me on track and the jobs in order thank goodness 😊
So firstly a follow-up on the plants ... the rabbits loved them and devoured about half, the rest have been saved by the tree guards that I should have put in place to start with... my bad!
Now back to the build ... the window bucks were built and concreted in place.
Most of the sashes will be put in place after the bales are up.
We started collecting rocks from a hill beside the railway line to build the stem wall and also had the luxury of recycling the old concrete path outside Darren's new shed extension, I think we would have been struggling to find enough rocks with out the concrete.
We ordered a small tractor, an Iseki t185, it's a beautiful ford blue, it spends a lot of its time on two wheels and looks like it's dancing with Darren lol
Clinton got in early and named it 'Frankie'! I think he spent all night working on how he was going to get in first with a name... very tricky lad lol
It's first job was to assist in transporting the extremely heavy Jarrah kitchen window.
The next job was to sift the clay through a screen and roll the rocks out, it worked a treat.
We made some test brick along the way and later some bricks for around the wood heater to soften the heat.
We also bought reclaimed solid bricks for the foyer and bathroom floors. They'll be cleaned with 10/1 water/hydrochloric acid solution and washed before putting down and possibly slate sealed or similar.
The stem wall and floors were then filled with blue metal to stop moisture rising into the floor.
We took the car trailer and headed to Arthur River to pick up two packs of 21 bales so we could start making the cob to top off the stem wall to strawbale height.
Darren and Frankie (yes, it's a girl tractor!) danced their way through their first batch of cob starting with mixing the clay and sand then adding water to saturate, a sprinkling of straw to hold it all together then onto the wall. A length of patio tube gave a perfect screeding level and left a perfect space to later run the electrics.
We had a tilt tray pick up 15 packs and we picked up another two, 19 packs at 21 per pack, 399 bales ... probably enough for a garden shed too lol.
The truckie wasn't wrapped that we didn't have any means of getting the bales off other than strapping and pulling, he thought they would slide off if he backed up and braked hard ... nah!!
So eventually he gave in to Darren's idea which of course worked perfectly!!
So the stem wall is finished and the floor had a layer of geocloth before the sand went in. It's been levelled and needs a bit of compacting before builders film then 75mm of cob in the main room.
Next time it'll be bale raising time .. yay 🤗🤗🤗
