Our Eco House Diary
Friday 24th December 2010
2010 turned out to be a much busier year than expected - our first rented house in Devon had far too many problems and a troublesome rental company causing us a all great deal of stress until we move to a new rented home in August!
After over seven month of stress we all needed a good rest and time to have fun, along with continuing to research and and develop our vision of our strawbale eco home. I don't think we realised what the impact would be of moving to the other end of the country and also not rushing mean that we are more focused and prepared which can only have a positive impact on our plans.
The property 2010 market wasn't on our side either; my Mum has moved down to live with us in the Summer but her house still hasn't sold. We still fell positive though and know her house will sell very soon and are looking forward to looking for land in Spring 2011 and beginning our self-build in Spring 2012 :)
Tuesday 23nd March 2010
Our eco house plans are still on track, but life happens too. See our blog for what's been happening over the last nearly year and a half. Durring 2009 we did more research and learning and gained lots of inspiration. Paul went on a strawbale tour of the Uk with Amazonails (I got to join him for the end of the last day) which was brilliant - see their website for many of the strawbale buildings visited. My Mum and I (Sarah) did a strawbale workshop with Chud of Strawbale Building which was very informative and enjoyable. I also did a did an Amazonails strawbale building course on the Shelf libary extention, this was hard work but positively answered so many of our questions about the type of strawbale home we want. Now we're waiting for my Mum to sell her house and move in with us in Devon, then we'll be looking for land!
Friday 28th November 2008
After a Summer frantically decorating our house (it looks amazing even though I say so myself!) and resisting the media going on about falling house prices, we've put our house sale on hold till 2009.
This is due to wanting to concentrate on health, well being and simply enjoying life - especially as we unexpectedly discovered Paul had very high blood pressure which had begun to effect his heart in October.
So our ecohouse plans are still very much on, we're just harmonising them with the energy of the seasons and now looking forward to enjoying a wonderful Yule with family and friends.
Wednesday 30th July 2008
Well the decorating and preparations for selling our house are well under way, if a little delayed due to decorator problems - see our blog. So we are now aiming to put our house on the market at the end of August.
I have been looking at houses to rent too and there's a few in the areas we are considering that are the right size and in the right price range too. Living in a bigger house with a bigger garden will be wonderful.
My Mum has had her house valued again and she was told £155,000.00 to £160,000.00 so not much change there. The estate agent wanted 1.25% though, for no advertising and no guarantee of an agent to show potential buyers around - this was essential as my Mum lives on her own. What do they do for all that money?!
Marketing our property ourselves rather than using an estate agent still seems the most attractive option.
Wednesday 9th July 2008
We have dreamed of building our own eco house for about five years or more, but circumstances weren't right until now!
We've used the time very well; researching green technologies, going on eco building courses, thinking about what we want from the land we buy and house we build, organising the finances and working out the logistics and so on.
