Building a home is an exciting prospect and excites my imagination. As I do more in-depth research (trying to determine which materials we should use) and estimate costs of materials, I am faced with the reality that what we can afford to construct is going to be quite minimal. In my head, I fantasize about a relatively spacious hobbit hole that is cozy but has enough room for each of us to stretch out a bit; in reality, we have the means to re-create the first floor of the Weasley house.
The danger in putting together our needs assessment is that I look at our lists and think, oh yes! we will have space for these things! And we could do this! And this! Oh, and this would be so pretty! And...then I remember that we are looking at a budget of $20,000. That amount of money is not going to build the 1200 square foot house of our dreams. That plan I drew up based on our needs assessment? Tossed. Gone is the office/healing space, gone is the third bedroom, the garage/shop is detached, and everything has to be a bit smaller. I sketched a new plan which is a simple rectangle. There are two reasons for this: 1) my research insists that a house with four corners is the cheapest to build and 2) I pulled out my feng shui books and they also recommend a simple square or rectangle. I also rearranged things to better accommodate feng shui pinciples (not an easy task, especially when trying to place toilets and furnaces).
My husband has his heart set on a bermed house--you will recognize a bermed house as the adorable "hobbit house" set into a hill (or possibly with the hill built around it) that takes advantage of the thermal mass of the land. It is what I envision as well. Unfortunately, an underground or bermed earth house requires a strong, load-bearing material like cement and cement is expensive and requires special equipment.
My research (which is not complete) is indicating that what we can afford to build is a straw bale house. Straw bale houses are relatively easy to build and energy efficient (and cute!), but it is not practical/efficient/affordable to do them underground. You use rectangular, tightly-packed straw bales to create your home (or fill in the walls if you decide to frame the house in wood or steel) and then paint a (lime, adobe, earthen, etc.) plaster over the bales. The reason straw bale is affordable for us is because the farm has lots of straw that we can gather and bale and store until we are ready to build. The plaster for a straw bale house averages about $5/square foot and if we do load-bearing straw baling, we eliminate the cost of timber framing.
An option that does allow for earth sheltering/berming is using earthbags. Earthbags are what they sound like: bags filled with earth which you stack like bricks. Supposedly, building with earthbags is one of the least expensive ways to build an earth sheltered home...but apparently manufacturers got wind of the interest and so purchasing polypropylene or burlap bags is not as cheap as it once was. Once again, if we are able to fill the bags with dirt from the farm (that sounds like a pain in the ass, but then again so does cutting and baling a bazillion bales of straw), then this might be affordable.
If we could get a loan for $50,000 at 3% interest, that would be one thing. Since that is unlikely to be an option, we need to build for $10-15/square foot, which is next to nothing. Any supplies and appliances that we do not currently own will be purchased from Habitat for Humanity and "ding and dent" suppliers. The point of this endeavor is not to have a show-quality house, it is to build a home and a particular lifestyle for our family. As idyllic as this life sounds--somewhat off the grid, growing our own food, raising farm animals, breathing fresh air, kids exploring the landscape, time together as a family--it is not a life easily won or kept. Our reluctance to go into debt must be honored, and that means we have to choose affordable materials and do the labor ourselves. My imagination easily grabs on to the gorgeous natural building examples in books and online and I want to believe that we, too, with little experience and even less money, can do it! It is important to me, however, that I have realistic expectations (which can certainly be exceeded! please, surprise and impress me!) so that I am not disappointed with a realistic outcome.
My imagination running away with itself is nothing new to me (I spend a lot of time there), and so when I need to ground I have found that it helps to define my overall objective. When preparing a character analysis for a play, I always identify what my character's overall objective (sometimes referred to as a "super-objective") is. For each scene, I then describe what my strategy, specific tactics, obstacles, and conditioning forces are. (Studying theatre is awesome, especially for someone like me who is fascinated by psychology, dynamic relationships and tensions, collaborative endeavors, etc. etc. etc.)
Overall objective: be in right relationship with God/dess, myself, others, the earth; embody Love; feel at Home
Strategy: strive to be in better relationship with all of the above while appreciating the very good things I have (loving family, support system, needs are met)
Specific Tactics: save money for building on the farm; research and plan for earth-shelter; self-sufficient lifestyle as much as possible; enjoy my family time; be open to opportunities
Obstacles: limited financial resources; learning curve for self-sustainability and home construction skills; the things I am good at do not lend to a high/consistent income
Conditioning Forces: I am pregnant and tired (and hungry...always hungry...)
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