Return to roots

My hubby and I met while studying forestry at the University of Melbourne.  We both love the outdoors, adore trees and are passionate about the environment.  Studying a degree in forestry gives one skills that most ordinarily don't get.  For example, we spent a week learning to us an axe - sharpen, cross cut and fell.  Naturally, we also spent a fair bit of time on the end of a chainsaw.  Don't get me wrong, there's much more to forest science than chopping trees down but unless you are one of the lucky ones (in my opinion) to move into a career with Parks Victoria then a certain component of any core forestry job involves falling and processing trees into timber or timber products.

In another attempt to save money and get the desired look for the final build that we were hoping for, we decided the best thing was to cut and mill the timber for our beams ourselves.

It's about here that I should probably take a little deviation and talk about the design of our home.  We started planning on building our home before we even got engaged.  In fact, if truth be told, I have been designing homes since before I could use a ruler with any degree of accuracy.  I remember frustrating my Dad no end asking him to draw the houses I had designed in my head.  I'd compile ideas from visiting friends, watching movies (The Sound of Music was life-changing for me and meant that every double story design included a double staircase) and looking at housing ads in the local paper and then get him to draw it.  Whenever he didn't quite understand what I meant, we'd both end up getting flustered.  This lasted until I was about 8 and mastered the use of ruling straight lines and right angles at which point Dad would be able to move from architect to critic and admirer.  

Anyway...  We had always planned to have a large (by modern standards) family.  We are both home bodies and get great enjoyment from being in our own environment.  We like to grow and preserve our own food.  Add to that the fact that my family are based in Melbourne; we were planning on living in country Victoria (aiming for Leongatha which is half way between both sets of grandparents) and we have friends scattered across Australia and overseas who we like to have come and stay with us and you'll see why our final house design included 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, open plan living, a library, a generous laundry and a pantry that was bigger than our bedroom.  My husband is a very bright man and decided that it was probably not going to be feasible to build such a grand design while based in Melbourne, working full time and with two young children.  So, we decided that we would build a shed in the same design as the house, master any techniques we'd need and then live in the shed while we built the house.

We spent a great deal (read months if not years) researching different materials with which to build a house.  My husband had always dreamed of building a stone house.  We didn't have to investigate that option for very long before we ruled it out.  Unfortunately we are not millionaires and it seemed to us that we would need to be just that if we were going to build out of bluestone.

I suggested strawbale and we umed and ahed for a while until my husband settled on mud brick.  For a while my husband was convinced we were onto a winner.   The thought of making a thousand mud bricks by hand was not appealing, I must admit.  While I liked the idea that the dirt we removed for the cutting would be recycled and used to build our walls I just couldn't see myself moulding clay into bricks and laying them to bake in the sun.

Then he investigated rammed earth and that was all the rage.  Until we read that someone in southern Victoria had no end of trouble with rammed earth being affected by driving rains.  As we had bought a block in an area that has an annual rainfall nearing 1000mm per year and where the prevailing westerly winds are sufficient enough to justify a windfarm and we decided that mud brick was off the list.  So we did some further investigation and found a product called timbercrete.  Finally we thought we were onto a winner.  We spoke at length to the manufacturers, had the MSDS and independent investigation report sent though and I had even picked the finish I liked.  We travelled to Mirboo North to see a home made from timbercrete and fell in love.  While it was not stone, it looked close enough for my hubby and we were sold on the insulation and termite resistant properties and the fact that it can be nailed and screwed just like timber.  I particularly liked the fact that the bricks would be manufactured elsewhere and the integrity of my skin would not be compromised by working for long hours with moisture-sapping clay.

Unfortunately, neither of us were bricklayers so once we factored into the cost of the build the fact that we would have to buy in labour we reluctantly admitted that we could not afford it.

So, back to the drawing board we went.  I again suggested strawbale and we looked in earnest into the costs and required skill level to construct a post and beam strawbale house.  While you can make structural strawbale homes, we like timber and if I had to have exposed posts then they were going to be timber rather than steel or concrete.  We found an engineer willing to work with us and he scrawled all over the plans we had drawn and we submitted them to our building inspector and we were on our way.

Fortunately, the Alberton West bridge had been pulled down in about 2001 and the shire had not wanted to cart the timber away so it was stacked on my in-laws farm.  Much negotiations took place and my in-laws agreed that we could pick over the stack and take the timber we needed for the posts.  The beams we would cut ourselves.

So, we bought a brilliant Stihl with a ripping blade and a milling attachment and again managed to convince my in-laws to let us make use of some trees that had fallen in a patch of bush on one of their farms.

In April 2009, while the slab took 6 weeks to cure, my hubby worked like a beast to mill the timber for the beams.  It was at about this point that I started to become thankful that our journey into building started with digging.  Green timber weighs a ton!

Pushing the saw was tough work

Beam 1 (out of 12)

Falling a tree

Hubby displaying his awesome forestry skills

Kit

 Entertaining children while trying to work with a chainsaw is not an easy feat.  Thankfully, being autumn there were pockets of mushrooms to be found.  We'd send the kids off to find the best sample of each type while we worked (in about 10 minute blocks) and then I would go and have a look at them.

We found an array of mushrooms

 We also found huge patches of native orchids

Stripping bark

A board was used to ensure the first cut was straight

While sourcing timber we found a beaten up David Brown 880

The kids, especially Master Padawan, thought it was awesome and tried to convince us to do it up and take it to the block with us.  Unfortunately, after much research and attempts to get parts, my hubby decided it was not worth rescuing.

 The beams were finally cut in July 2010 and made an impressive stack

Next was to transport the posts.  Again we were thankful for a warm up.  While the beams were heavy the posts, at a minimum 200x200mm, and ironbark at minimum 3m lengths were NOT light.

Young Padawan was convinced he could use the chainsaw so my hubby decided he could try to hold it while it was off to see how heavy it was

Padawan attempting to smile while he holds the weight of the 660

Hubby, being who he is, showed Padawan how much of a difference man muscles make.  

He-Man

Needless to say, with only woman muscles (and as much as I am an advocate that woman can do what men can, they can't), I was reduced to moving off-cuts out of the way and loading them onto the trailer to salvage for firewood or to turn into charcoal for the forge.  The nails were salvaged for use in the forge and some were turned into pegs for a coat rack that my hubby was commissioned to make.

The kids were glad to be out of the mosquito infested forest and had a ball running around in the paddock while we worked.  It helped that the stack of bridge timbers is on the main road between home and Yarram and that the in-laws travel the same route so the kids were lucky to have a couple of visits from Grandpa while we were working.  

 

Due to the weight of the timber, we could only transport 2 posts at a time in our trailer.

 We transported the posts home as an interim step as we needed power to be able to remove all the nails and bolts before transporting them to the block.