Hi all,
These are some of my favourite block photo's.
They are of the front of the block as it is L-shaped and the rear is not visible from the road. They are of the view from the dam up the hill to where the house will be built and then down towards the dam from the "entry point" to the back part of the block. These and many others have also been uploaded to my FB page.
We have made minimal progress since last post. I have been trying to find someone to draw up the plans - someone with SB experience.
Mark from Professional Strawbale (www.strawbale.com.au)- put me onto someone but I thought I would try speak to more than one draftsman to ascertain experience and obtain input. Everyone I have spoken to showed interest in the project but very few had experience with SB.
I spoke to one draftsman who had said he had researched the medium for his nephew however that project is at early stages.
Another had only ever completed one project. It was the chocolate shop out Daylesford I am told. We might need to take another trip out there and chat to the owners as we were there a few weeks ago and are aware it was predominantly owner built but both Karl and Anastasia were more interested in the chocolate for sale than the building!
I spoke to a so called expert who would not assist without us taking part in his workshops first! Another source advised he had had to "fix" problems with other so called "professionals" who are based locally on more than one occasion. Mind you we have seen some of the finished work of these other teams and are not exactly thrilled by it so we would not be in a hurry to go out and pay premium prices for average output.
As such Mark's recommendation would appear the best bet at this stage. We are hoping to get out to Smeaton to another house he has worked on and speak to the owners as I have some time off over the next couple of weeks (this reminds me I had better call Mark to tee this up).
On a positive note, on the day of the "chocolate" trip we went to the Goldfields Revegetation Native Nursery out in Mandurang (near Bendigo) and stocked up on a whole range of tubestock to start some screen planting. I can't wait to get stuck into this whilst I am on leave. It has to be more fun than the two backbreaking days it took to mow the block recently .... bye now
