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!