Rough-in Plumbing Done!

I just remembered that I never posted pics on the rough-in plumbing, gas and electrical. Here are those pictures....

Waiting On Concrete

Not much has been going on since the last post. We are just waiting on concrete. There is only one concrete plant within 30 miles that will deliver to us so we are at their mercy. This Tuesday is our pour date, i will post about the concrete pour Tuesday evening if I don't get sidetracked.

We did unload the doors and windows today so I decided to post some pictures. I am still trying to decide what color I will stain them.

Foundation is getting started!

Today they started our foundation! I am very excited, it's been almost a year since we moved to our property and living in a RV has been okay, but not great. I am ready to move out now.

The foundation will look like this.....

The exterior beam looks like this.....

And the exterior wall will be 3 1/2" higher than the floor, like this....

I took a couple of pictures of the foundation boards they have erected below.

 That's it for today, I will update again when more stuff gets done.

Buying Doors, Windows, etc.

I don't have any pictures for this post, I am kicking myself for not taking pictures of the most awesome doors ever, but in time, everyone will see them. Anyway, we purchased our doors and windows at a place that has new and previously installed stuff. Our doors are all new, but thanks to Trevor, we got them at used prices.

The windows are restocks, that really don't all match, but they won't be in the same rooms and look close enough that the savings was well worth it.

Now let me tell you about the interior doors, they are solid knotty alder, 8' tall and absolutely beautiful. Our house was supposed to be 9' tall, but now, because of these doors, we are going up to 10' ceilings. Our front door is an eight foot tall full glass knotty alder also. I can't wait to see these installed.

We also did some shopping at HD for our plumbing and electrical rough in. That's just the boring stuff in my opinion. It will be nice when that foundation is finished and we can get to stacking, oh wait, it needs to be started first.

Other things I have done are....
I worked on acquiring our straw bales, I think I found 48" x 18" x 16" bales for $3 each, I am waiting on a shipping quote. I also moved stuff around on my plan again, I really need to stop changing things now, once we start the foundation, everything needs to stay put. Almost forgot, I purchased our flexible gas line from Amazon because Home Depot doesn't carry it.

I will post more updates as we get going. Thanks for reading. 

If you need doors and windows in the Austin area, I highly recommend a visit to http://www.dooroutlet.biz/

Starting The Straw Bale House

I would like to point out right off the bat that I am not, nor claim to be a writer, this blog is just a diary of our build so that people can either learn from our mistakes or from our genius ideas.

This is the house plan I designed, it only took me 3 years and about eight other plans I designed to finally decide on this one. It is a simple house design for our first straw bale construction and has everything we need. The exterior foot print is 32' X 52', the interior square footage is about 1380.

Alrighty, we are finally starting the foundation!
Of course we have been working long hours before this day, like getting our house plan done and pricing everything out, but today was the first day we spent our money. Today we bought the rebar and fill dirt for our foundation.

 

It was actually a lot of back and forth deciding on what kind of structure we wanted to build, first straw bale, then earth bag, back to straw bale, then the complete block system, a freaking manufactured home because I am so sick of this RV, now back to straw bale. I am so glad I didn't take the easy way out, manufactured homes are just not energy efficient enough to eventually go completely solar, but that adventure will be for a whole new blog I imagine. 

I will try to keep up with this blog, but like I said before, I am not a writer and on top of that, I have a fairly short attention span. Let's all cross our fingers that I stay on track and see this through.