We need to talk about Kevin!

I've just finished reading Kevin McCloud's Principles of Home - Making a Place to Live.

You may or may not be a fan of Kevin and his Grand Designs (I admit to being a real Kevin tragic!), but he has a sensible and refreshingly positive approach to sustainable living. He believes we need to embrace a slower, more enjoyable and gentler way of living that is less taxing on the resources of the planet, but that we don't have to compromise our comfort or lifestyle to do it.

He also believes that despite our current depletion of the planet's resources, we will be saved by our own resourcefulness and imagination, by returning to good design and craftsmanship, and by embracing a philosophy of sharing rather than wanting everything for ourselves.

The book offers practical suggestions on both building and retrofitting your home to make it energy efficient, how to shop sensibly and ethically, and what items are worth investing in (and what aren't), as well as looking at what a home offers in terms of social and personal values.

Kevin McCloud practices what he preaches. His building company, Hab (It stands for Happiness Architecture Beauty.) builds low-cost, affordable and sustainable homes, designed in the belief that they should enrich the environment, create a sense of community and make people happy.

Bunya Nuts

It's Bunya nut season, and the massive cones are crashing down every day, spilling scores of nuts onto the driveway.

Bunya Nuts in the cone

It's not surprising that the Aboriginals travelled vast distances to take advantage of their bountiful harvest. One large tree can produce an enormous number of nuts.

Bunya nuts in the husk

 

They require a fair amount of work to cut open the tough husks and release the nuts, which are about 6cm long. 

  

Russell bought this Bunya Nut Recipe Book from the Bunya Nut Cafe at Blackbutt, and will be experimenting with new uses for the nuts. They taste rather like potatoes, and can be roasted and used in soups. The ground nuts can be used instead of flour in soups, breads and cakes, and also as a pesto.

Eco-friendly wood finish

We've tried wherever possible to use low VOC, non-solvent based paint and wood finishes, so in Rose Gum cottage we finished the floors and the timber kitchen and vanity tops with Cabots CFP water-based wood finish.

Unfortunately it has been a disaster. Within weeks there were splash marks on the benchtops, and rings where people had left cups, wet dishes or the dishwashing detergent. With the help of our humid climate, these had soon turned to black mould. When someone spilled red wine on the floor - and I have no doubt they hastened to wipe it up - it nevertheless left a red stain.

A phone call to Cabots technical section revealed that if we wanted to recoat the benches with something else, we would have to sand them back completely to remove all the water-based finish.

We've now taken out and sanded back both the kitchen bench and the vanity, and refinished them with two coats of matt Estapol followed by Scandinavian oil.

Kitchen - Rose Gum Cottage

It was frustrating to have to redo what had already been completed just recently. It's also disappointing to know that the environmentally friendly approach did not produce an acceptable finish.

There may well be eco-friendly products out there which are suitable for wet areas, and if so we'd love to hear about them, because there's still a lot of the house to go!

Even more eco-friendly cleaning!

In line with our philosophy of using eco-friendly and healthy cleaning products, I was pleased to come across Norwex microfibre cloths.

It came about when one of our cottage guests told me she’d cleaned the windows in the cottage. It is not every day our guests do the cleaning for us! 

Judith explained that she was an agent for Norwex, and had cleaned the windows with the antibacterial envirocloth and the dry window cloth, using nothing but water. They looked amazing.

Windows get particularly dirty here, with a combination of mould and cobwebs, and cleaning them is not a job I enjoy. Seeing the streak-free result of her efforts, I quickly ordered three cloths - antibacterial envirocloth, window cloth and kitchen scrub cloth.

Norwex antibacterial envirocloth

I can honestly say they are a delight to use. The antibacterial cloth can be used dry for dusting, or wet for general cleaning. The window cloth dries off after the antibacterial, leaving no streaks, and the scrub cloth works on stubborn bits without the use of abrasive cleaners.Windows and shower screens are cleaned really easily and well, while the antibacterial cloth and scrub cloth make light work of bathrooms and kitchens.

I have since bought their floor cloths – one dry for dust (saves vacuuming) and one wet for washing - both interchangeable on the one velcro-tipped mop head.

The initial investment may seem high, but using microfibre cloths, which require only water, avoids the use of standard cleaning  products, which can cause skin irritations, pollute the environment, and are expensive - making them good for the budget as well as the environment.

Durra Panels - the new light earth

Despite our best intentions with building in light earth, the experience has been fraught with problems. Given the time it was taking to complete them, we decided to pay someone to help us build them, only to have the finished walls fall down after he left, when we discovered his technique had been flawed. So we started considering a different approach.

We had already experimented with a pseudo-earth wall in the dining room. One of the dining walls is half internal (backing onto the entry) and half external (backing onto the verandah). Instead of making a half-and-half wall of earth and timber, which would have looked silly, we filled the internal section with gyprock and rendered it to look the same as the earth wall. It’s impossible to see which half is timber framed and which is earth (it requires another fine coat to cover the centre stud).

Left side - render over light earth. Right side - render over gyprock

Russell suggested we do the same for the remaining walls under the verandah. I was initially horrified. Gyprock instead of earth?? Was he giving up the dream, selling out to The Man??!! 

But then I remembered a compressed straw panel called Durra, made by Ortech in Victoria. It is 50mm of straw held between two layers of thick paper – no chemical binders, nothing but waste straw in recycled paper. Its credentials were good.

We ordered panels cut to an exact height, and cut them vertically to fit between the studs on the external walls, and inside the studs on the internal walls. Between the two layers we added an air gap and some R3 insulation. 

External panels set between studs.

Internal panels placed over studs, with insulation in between.

The Durra walls were cut to size and in place in two days – compared with what would have been months of work doing light earth. On top of this the walls now have a total R value of about R6+ - way better than the earth walls would have rated.

We’ll probably need to ‘rough up’ the Durra a bit to accept the same clay render we are using on the earth walls, but the finished product should be indistinguishable.

The magic of seeds!

In the past I’ve always bought herb and vege seedlings, at reasonable expense and with mixed success.  Now I’ve started growing my herbs and vegetables from seed, and I’ve been excited by both the ease and the success.

Seeds fascinate me – how can something so tiny – like a speck from  packet of hundreds and thousands – grow with just a little water and sunlight into a plant that provides food?

I started planting seeds in pots on the sunny windowsill in the dining room. As they’re in prime view, they’ve got a fair chance of being watered regularly! Within days they had shoots, and in a couple of weeks I was planting them out in the new vege patch.

Last night we ate mixed salad leaves and snow peas from our garden, with avocado from the neighbour’s, and tonight there’ll be home grown bok choy and snow peas in the stir fry.

In a few weeks we’re expecting pumpkin, zucchini and capsicum, as well as an ongoing crop of tomatoes, together with fresh basil for the pasta, and coriander for the Thai dishes. It’s not self-sufficiency, but it’s a start!

Restoring a cane daybed

I've got a couple of old cane daybeds, and while they are quite comfortable, they were looking a little the worse for wear. The cane binding that wraps the joints was disintergrating, and the cane slats were weathered and discoloured.

I thought the larger one would make a good addition to the new cottage, as a single bed suitable for a child.

I replaced some of the broken cane binding, and we painted the whole thing using a spray gun (by far the easiest way for something so fiddly). A new 40mm foam mattress replaced the three existing cushions. I made covers in a tapestry fabric from Spotlight, and covered over the padded base with a pleated valance in the same material. The cushion covers are removable and the valance goes on and off using velcro strips on three sides.






 







The daybed is about the same size as a folding bed, but more comfortable and much more attractive. It's been used by a couple of youngsters, who have given it the thumbs up.