Strong Foundations

So its been longer than we wanted but we are just a few days away from pouring the foundation. We have hit a few snags here and there but the project is moving along. We have had a couple small decisions to make over the past couple weeks mainly regarding the plumbing. Its hard to imagine but every little decision we make now will ultimately affect the functionality of the home later on.

One of the hardest decisions for us to make was the final location of the outdoor shower. This was a definite must have for us. After using one while on vacation in Costa Rica we decided we had to have one. After 2 weeks of debate and long discussions with the contractor we finally made a decision...(your just going to have to wait and see)

Unfortunately, the foundation process is not very exciting visually. It is actually kind of unappealing. There are lots of scraps of wood and piles of sand for fill. The only exciting part is seeing exactly where the house and garage will sit on the property. However it is still difficult to imagine that we are standing in our living room or kitchen while we are out there.

We are currently in the process of talking with local farmers to find out when the first harvest will be so we can secure our straw bales. It has been a decent spring here in Texas and with some recent rain they expect a good yield in early to mid may. The trees are starting to gain their spring leaves and it is looking a lot more green here in Austin. We cant wait to post up another update once the foundation is completed and we start the framing. Thanks for reading, enjoy the pics!

Street view of the garage forms

Garage forms completed, plumbing for garage completed! Ready to be poured

Side view next to garage where the stream flows when it rains!

This will be the view from our master bedroom, minus all the junk!

View within the grove of Live Oaks at the front of the property

House forms completed with all plumbing complete as well! bring on the concrete!

Side of the house

From ideas to reality

Let me start off by saying that Yasmin and I have not taken a very conventional path to owning our first home. Building a straw bale house is, by far, not the most common building method. It's difficult to explain to people who have never heard of it, uncommon to find people familiar with it, and even more difficult to find somebody with straw bale design and building experience. We have only been in one straw bale home, which was designed by our architect. We fell in love with the idea from browsing through several books and pictures on the internet. We have taken our simple idea and turned it into something that will soon be reality. This has given us the opportunity to take more of a hands-on approach to the design process and will give us the opportunity to be more involved during the building process. We plan on having a straw bale workshop to raise the bales for our home that will be run by our architect, Ben Obregon of the sustainabledesigncenter.com This will give family, friends, and any others who would like to lend a hand, an opportunity to learn about sustainable design and green building (similar to a barn raising).

It has been several months since the last post on our straw bale project. Over those months we have been working on clearing dead trees and brush from our property, finalizing house plans, and obtaining building permits. We  finally closed on our construction loan on January 29th, 2013 so the actual construction has begun! Here are some pictures to update you all on the progress.

Lynn and John helping cut down some trees! July 2012

July 2012

Same view as picture above only this is from mid-February 2013.

Some of the hand-hewn oak beams that will be used for the framing. These are from the 1830's!

The foundation guys dropped off everything needed for forming up foundation. Early February 2013

The area has finally been cleared for the house, see the picture below for comparison.

Foundation forms are going in. March 1st, 2013

Yasmin dancing in our future bedroom. March 2nd, 2013

Hopefully we will not have to wait 6 more months for the next update! Foundation should be poured within the next 2-3 weeks. Then we can start building upwards! We will do our best to keep you updated with any major progress made. Thanks for reading!