It’s a bit exciting! After over 2 years of living in the house, the final coat on the outside of the strawbale home is being rendered! Our house has been covered in pink plastic mesh for so long that looking at my non-pink, rendered home brings a tear to my eye!

The render looks brown now because of the sand, but as it dries it will go white. When we limewash it, it will be even whiter.

Monte rendering! Yay!

View of front of house

In the photo above, you can see the pink mesh in the far right. You can see why I am so happy to see render go on the walls. I love the colour pink, but not as a choice home exteriors.

Monte rendering and view of wet render

A team of five blokes worked for 11 hours on Saturday. Mixing render in three cement mixers; spraying render; troweling render; sponging render. Over half the house was done. In a few weeks they’ll hopefully reconvene to finish the house.

I did hear Monte and a friend, who also built a strawbale house, mention: ‘now I remember why I don’t want to build with strawbale again,’ because of the huge job that is rendering. They agreed that there are other methods of building that would be suitable for our extension. Strawbale looks and feels great but the rendering is an arduous task (thank goodness for the help of good mates!).

pumpkin muffins for the workers!

We are one step closer to official completion of the house. Paving the front and painting the exterior wood beams and posts is next. When that is finished we will do a bit more in the garden too.

To have great friends is such a blessing, especially when we don’t have the comfort of family nearby. And looking at my house, so close to being complete, makes me think about the journey of change, sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears that we’ve been through over that past four years…

Monte at work

‘I’m so proud of my daddy!’

I think that bringing Elora home, 18 months ago, to the home we built, was the sweet icing on the proverbial cake; a wonderful conclusion to the journey. But that’s another story.