Flexing our green credentials #4 - screen & insulation

#1 The timber for our screen comes from Radial timbers who 'maximise the recovery of sawn timber from smaller logs' by cutting the log radially, which is funny considering the name of the company. This is a good thing because you get more timber out of the log and higher value products from younger trees.

#2 It turns out our Earth Wool insulation is not wool per se, as in 'off a sheep's back, supporting Australian farmers' wool. Rather, it is a manufactured product made from recycled glass bottles and sand using a 'rapidly renewable' bio-binder to hold it all together and with no phenol, formaldehyde, acrylics or artificial colours. Sounds great, looks cosy, fingers crossed it keeps heat in or out depending on the season.

One finished quilt

So about 15 months ago I walk into an upmarket children's clothing and furniture boutique and spy some beautiful bed quilts. Bearing in mind the future move to a brand spanking new house which will include extricating 3 children and their belongings from the one room they currently share and spreading them out a little, the idea of brand spanking new quilts for each child in the brand spanking new bedrooms seemed little short of inspired. These, ahem, shop quilts which rated very highly on the gorgeousness scale were equally high on the expensiveness scale. Being newly reacquainted with my sewing machine at the time, my first thought was 'I'll just make them, how hard can it be?'

Well, it wasn't hard exactly but far! more! time consuming! than I could ever have imagined - and I didn't even do fancy squares. Making a quilt does not just involve sewing a few squares of lovely fabric together! Who'd have thought? Sewing the squares is just the first in a loooong series of quilt making steps from sewing a backing, buying some batting, stretching and taping it all out on the floor, keeping the kids off, making a quilt sandwich with 800! safety pins, actually quilting the darn thing (that's all the lines sewn across the top), attaching the binding and finally finishing the binding by hand sewing all around a double! bed! sized! quilt!!! This last step took approximately 4 weeks of Australian Amazing Race plus taped Offspring episodes.

It only took 11 months and I only have 2 other children. And we are moving in when?

Warming wool

On a rather cold Winter's day it was so lovely to see this cosily warm-looking insulation going in the walls and roof!

So it's big?

Pretty much the response of anyone on seeing photos of the South side of the house (which is also the street side) for the first time is 'it's big!', and we always protest no, no, no, it's not big, it's just long, mostly only 5 metres wide, and the screen is actually covering the back of the angled roof space so it's deceptive. Why do we protest so much? Well, part of green building is that houses aren't supposed to be too big. Small is better, less materials (embodied energy) for building and less to heat when we are living there.

Like everything we can compare up or down. It is big compared to our first 2br unit in Camberwell but then so is the land and so is our family. It's not that big when you realise the above points, and you compare it to the more modern suburban home of big upstairs, big downstairs and multiple living spaces. It is 4Br, 2 bathroom, 2 living areas, kitchen & meals plus a big carport and deck. We also have a home-based business to accommodate so have added the studio for that purpose (futher adding to the length of the house!). It is bigger than both of the homes we grew up in.

For the more technically minded, including the carport, deck and studio it is about 30sq. Excluding them it is about 24sq. So it's big?

Choices, choices

I just ordered a stack of testpots from resene paints. I am currently looking at the 'tea' spectrum (swatches below are quarter, half, tea, double) for internals as well as some colours for the kids rooms. I am letting them have input into their room colours (kind of).

I do really like Resene's colours but I love that I can order them online for home delivery! From next week, visits to the to the block should start to yield sizeable plaster offcuts so there will be a fair bit of painting then trips loaded up with painted plaster samples/carpet & tiles to try it all out in situ. All good fun!

A pretty picture

For a break from the grey, timber and frames of many of the recent posts, as well as the Wintry conditions outside, here is a reason why we are making this move:

There's a pipe over here and a cable over there

The walls are soon to be all covered up inside so the busy work of putting important bits and pieces in and through them has been in progress. There are pipes to showers, taps and toilets, a grey water pipe from the laundry outside, pipes to take the hydronic heating upstairs and even a pipe for a plumbed in fridge with water dispenser, which our fridge does not have, but hey, that's called future proofing. Then there's wires for lights, fans, powerpoints, and cabling for data and sound all over the place . It's not quite to the Grand Designs smart house level, but it should be a warm, well-watered, well-lit and musical place to live!