Nov 30, 20223 min read

1 Year House-versary Thoughts

1 year ago we moved into this home. We love living here, and just wish life would slow down a bit so we could more easily pause and fully enjoy this crazy stage of life. Anyway, as life continues to hurtle along, we’ve been reflecting on how much God has upheld us, preserved us, and blessed us over the last handful of years getting here.

Some high points of the building process were:

Drawing up our house floorplan. We went through at least a half dozen variations before settling on this shape and layout, and our final major change before sending the plan to our draftsman was to flip the whole plan to switch which rooms got the morning and evening sun.

Getting our straw. Most of it was delivered when it was cut in February, and we stored it in our container for four months until we were actually ready to build our infill walls.

Seeing the frame go up, it was so wonderful to see the actual shapes of the rooms, it really looked like the spaces would work how we hoped.

Colouring the slab with acid stains was great fun, the whole process was a series of controlled accidents as we were never quite sure how the acids would react with whatever minerals happened to be in each area of concrete, and it was strange to first turn the floors GREEN while the acid cured. the best part was washing the floors down to reveal fabulous complex shades of terracottas and browns.

We took a punt on a batch of redgum floorboards on Tassie’s north coast up for sale on Gumtree, and I’m so glad we hot them as they have been perfect for lining our windowseats and dado panels.

by the time our house was ready for the infill walls, it was winter. It was ironic to be building walls which needed to stay dry until sealed in at least the first coat of render… in the middle of a Tasmania winter. So we were very thankful for a couple of mild months, and we built the walls in sections, rendering each before starting the next section. There were great times, Josh and I working together two or three days a week, seeing slow but steady progress. Remembering the good times makes up for some of the miserable times while exhausted, freezing, and covered in mud.

Building and shaping around our windows was challenging, and several things along the way had to be pulled out and re-done, but the end result was so rewarding and the deep beveled window seats are definitely some of our favourite things about the house.

Helping hands. Several wonderful family members took care of our children over and over so Josh and I could work 2-3 solid days each week. Then there were plenty of other days when the children played nearby or tried to help me.

There were times when we thought we would never be done with mud, but you know, some of the mud we used in the render and paints is a beautiful colour!

I felt like a mad scientist mixing up quark, linseed, and pigments to make paints, but it was SO much fun! Learned the hard way though, that linseed oil will go mouldy in the damp, and in a couple of damp-prone places we didn’t use enough mould inhibitor. In most rooms however, our home-made paint has been very successful.

Helping to the kitchen in was my last major contribution to the house-build before several months of morning-sickness set in. From here to moving in was a blurry rush to get ready to move before baby was due.

Miraculously, we progressed enough to move in at the end of November and woke up for the first time in our very own home, on the first day of Advent 2021.

Christmas showed us that our home’s layout worked just as we had hoped, we expanded our dining room to seat 21 and still had space in the living area to sprawl out with our guests.