Building – Page 5 – thegreenerdream

A stressful December?

December 19, 2015December 19, 2015mariamayfleming

There were a lot of big plans for December blog posts in late November. One was to be about green natural decorations for your house and garden. How to put together wreaths, mantelpiece swathes and other beauties from Ivy and found plant materials. Another post was to be about Scandinavian paper Christmas decorations for the tree, such as woven hearts and something frilly that translates as a Christmas tree sweet or Christmas tree cracker.

But somehow those posts did not get written. We moved into our new extension early in the month and we had grossly underestimated the amount of work involved. Everything in our combined living and bed room had to be moved out, sorted through and made to find new spaces in the extension. The recently vacated mottled green room was not to our teenage girls liking. It also looked a bit worse for wear so had to be painted; ceiling, walls, shelves, radiator, window frames etc… Everything needed two or three coats of paint. Now it is a dream in Venetian white and a grey-blue colour called Robin egg. The girls are happily moved in but to get them to help out with the room they until recently shared with their sister is a different story. Three teenage girls can accumulate a huge amount of stuff and now all of that needs to be sorted through and moved before that room can be painted and decorated for the remaining inhabitant.

We also had five big crates residing in the kitchen full of the stuff taken off a shelving unit we had to move out in order to build the walkway through to the extension. They were very much in the way in our small kitchen and are now in the process of slowly being sorted through. So to make a long story short, almost everything in the house is being moved around. It is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are hard to find and even harder to put together.

December can be a stressful month at the best of times, but all of the above in combination with all the holiday must do’s and should do’s has made this past few weeks quite difficult. Slowly the tension has been building up and time has been slipping through our fingers, disappearing fast. And at the back of our minds the thoughts have been gnawing away, we must find time for the blog posts, and time to write the Christmas cards and time to find the Jamie Oliver Recipe cards for the Christmas dinner, and time for this and time for that until there has been no time to enjoy anything anymore.

It was high time to put on the big brakes. How much fun is Christmas with six grumpy, tired and irritable individuals? So now we are relaxing as much as possible. We had an evening together last week and dressed the tree. It will be the only decoration in our house, but we are ok with that. The room that needs painting will still be there after the holidays, and so will most of the mess in the house and all the weeds in the garden, but does it really matter? Is it good to have cleaned sparkling windows but no time to sit down and talk to each other? Is an hour spent cleaning worth more than an hour visiting a lonely neighbour or a friend? We might still make some paper decorations for the tree and write about it here but only because it is fun and not because we have to.

We leave you now with a few pictures from our lives in December and we wish you all a calm and happy time over the holidays.

When all the pieces come together – Mosaic.

November 28, 2015November 12, 2016mariamayfleming

We are very happy and proud to announce that our big mosaic floor in the extension now is finished. The actual tiling part of the job was completed a couple of months ago but we only put down a first layer of grout to bind it all together at that stage. We have been busy building, insulating and painting the different wall sections since then but this week all of that work was finished and we could move onto the final stage of the floor.

LED there be light.

November 17, 2015mariamayfleming

We are nearing the completion of our extension build. As we did not want to have too many electrical sockets and light switches in there we thought about other possible solutions for lighting our new home. Our search took us to the IKEA website and we were happy to find that all the lights and light bulbs sold in the IKEA store in Dublin now are LED. For our new built in sofa we put up three spotlights with rechargeable batteries and LED bulbs. When you press them lightly they light up for 30 minutes or if you would like to turn them off before that you only need to press them again. They should be able to light up that space for twenty years using very little electricity and needing no wiring.

We have been sceptical about the use of LED lights in candle shape as we thought they would feel artificial but as we now have a large young dog in the house, in many places real candles are not an option anymore. So we went ahead and bought a few block candles that can be used with rechargeable batteries and a few small tea-lights. When we tried them out we were happily surprised at how real they looked, giving off a warm flickering light. They are actually so convincing that the urge to blow them out before leaving the room, has been there on several occasions.

We now have the option to use them everywhere and anywhere, while being kind to the environment. They use very little electricity and are designed to last for up to twenty years. The rechargeable batteries can be charged up to 500 times. There are no worries about putting them to close to the ceiling or walls, curtains or other flammable materials. The dog and any kids about can knock them over and they can be forgotten without any risk. We do believe real candles still are a magical and beautiful addition to our home, but only in the right place.

Because of all these beautiful and practical solutions, we only need one wired in light in the middle of the ceiling that will also have an LED bulb, so it will be very energy efficient. There are now an incredible amount of LED fairy lights available, for use at Christmas or all throughout the year. They are very safe as they do not heat up so can be placed close to fabrics and plastics. Many of them can be used with rechargeable batteries and cause minimal impact on the environment. LED really is an excellent invention, revolutionising the way we can use light in our homes.

The sky is the limit.

October 14, 2015November 22, 2016mariamayfleming

We are nearing the completion of our extension build. It has been a long laborious journey, hundreds and hundreds of hours of digging drainage ditches, filling tyres with soil for the retaining wall and stripping bark of the logs for the main construction. We have also managed to finish the whole mosaic floor, the only thing it needs now is a final layer of grout to smooth it out and a polish. We are happy with the results and will write a bit more about it and show you some more pictures after the final polish.

A grand day out.

October 4, 2015mariamayfleming

We live only a few hundred meters from the Mayo border and yesterday we decided to stop building, harvesting and weeding for a day and go exploring in this beautiful county. Our destination was Achill Island, the largest island of the coast of Ireland, reached by a bridge.

The first stop was stunning Keel beach where our puppy, Dubh, saw the ocean for the first time. She loved it and since the beach was practically deserted she could come off her lead and race along the surf. At first she barked loudly at the waves but she soon got used to them. We walked for a long time, played on the beach and had a picnic. We remembered the cheese but forgot the crackers.

Our next stop was a megalithic tomb. We reached it after a rather steep climb up the side of Slievemore, a most beautiful and impressive mountain. We were quite tired when we reached the tomb but it was defiantly worth it. We found a very peaceful place where we all rested for a while.

We then went on a little bit down the road and reached the deserted village. There are more than eighty ruined houses here. It is a place of tremendous beauty but it also has a feeling of sadness. Walking around the village you can’t help but think about the people who lived here once and how difficult it must have been to be forced to leave home and set out on an uncertain journey. The village was abandoned during the famine, in 1845, and while some people only moved to another village by the sea, others were forced to emigrate. In later years and up until the 1940s the village was used as sleeping quarters in the summertime by teenage boys and girls bringing the sheep up the mountain to graze.

Today the only inhabitants of the cottages are sheep and they graze where the potatoes and other vegetables once grew. You can clearly see the old ridges, called lazy beds in the fields, made to make the soil a little more fertile and we are certain seaweed was brought up from the beach to further enhance fertility.

Our outing was a welcome change to our everyday routine, we spend most of our time close to home and it is energizing to get out and away sometimes, if only for a day. Achill Island is a beautiful place, full of history and interesting natural sites. We can thoroughly recommend a visit. At this time of year it is quiet and peaceful , a big change from the summer months when thousands of tourists visit the island.

A tapestry of sorts.

September 22, 2015January 15, 2017mariamayfleming

We are going to use part of the new extension as a space to put our loft bed into. We are not planning to sleep in our extension for more than a few years, as we have four teenagers and when they start to leave the nest we will be able to move into one of the bed rooms. Because of that we do not want to start building walls to partition of a sleeping area, but at the same time we want a semi private space to house our clothes and personal items. Our solution is a tapestry of sorts which contains appliqué, embroidery and a bit of magic.

Making a connection.

September 16, 2015September 16, 2015mariamayfleming

In Ireland you are allowed to build a 40 square meter extension to an existing property without applying for planning permission. There are quite a few rules to follow; the extension has to be at the back of the house, it cannot be higher than the existing house roof and it cannot be too close to a neighbouring property to name a few. We bought our small cottage with this in mind. We wanted to build a roundhouse with a reciprocal roof and to get planning permission for that in Ireland might have been difficult. When you are building with recycled and found materials you need to be flexible and it would be very difficult to submit exact plans for an extension or a house like the one we wanted to build.

Thus we bought our cottage and went about our build, following all the guide lines for a planning permission free, 40 square meter extension. As the house is square and the extension is round we needed a clever way to connect the two. We decided to make a 1 square meter hallway for that purpose. The floor in the roundhouse is just less than 39 square meters.

This also made our build easier as the existing house roof not needed any cutting into to accommodate the extension. The two roofs come together over the new hallway.

We started by removing a wall in a bedroom and found a lovely old fireplace behind the dry-lining. We then rebuilt the wall further into the room, creating a walkway, ending at the outer wall of the cottage. After that it was time to knock through to create a hole in the wall and connect the old and the new. Outside the hole we built the new 1 square meter hallway to allow for the two parts of the building to come together. One wall in this hallway is made out of bottle bricks and the other is a backdoor we got from friends. It is practical and safe to have a door there as when we moved in there was only a front door in the house as the old backdoor had been blocked up and is now part of the bathroom wall.

We rebuilt the wall where we had knocked through and created a small doorframe, as we wish to be able to close off the extension from the rest of the house at times. After that we put plasterboard on the walls and added bonding to fill larger gaps in the construction. All that is left to do now is to plaster the walls and ceiling and paint it all a light colour to make the walkway as bright as possible. The old fireplace needed the existing plaster knocked off and some bonding added to stabilise the stonework before it could be painted white. It will not be used as a fireplace as we already have one in the kitchen with a back boiler that heats all the radiators. It will just be a nice addition to the walkway and we will put some lights in it for night time use.

A bottle-wall of many colours.

September 5, 2015November 28, 2016mariamayfleming

It was finally time to finish off work on our bottle wall sections this week. We have written a few posts about bottle wall construction over the last few months, and now it was time to add the finishing touches to our largest project. We found a lovely arched sash window as a second in a local joinery and decided to add a bottle wall arch to each side of it for a beautiful composition and also to add more light into our extension.

Every dog has its day.

August 11, 2015September 6, 2015mariamayfleming

We are having a new addition to the family. Luckily it will not take nine month but she will arrive on Saturday. We have known for a couple of years that we wanted a dog and one day last month we saw this beauty that had just come into the care of the Roscommon spca. We went to have a look at her and fell in love. She is a lovely black mongrel, about five or six months old with a beautiful temperament. Because of her colour we decided to name her Dubh, which is Irish for black. It is pronounced similar to dove.

If you are thinking of getting a dog we can truly recommend getting a rescue dog. Often these dogs are not pure bred so less susceptible to problems and diseases. We are not sure what breeds are in Dubh, but we are sure you will agree with us when we say she is gorgeous. If you have any ideas what breeds she might be please write about it in the comments. We think she might have a bit of black Labrador, a bit of Grey hound or Lurcher and maybe a bit of Doberman.

When you get a rescued dog in Ireland the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals charity makes sure the dog is neutered or spayed, micro chipped and has had all its vaccinations and treatments for fleas and worms. The cost for all this amounts to about €250 but you only pay in the region of about €80 to €120 depending on where you are in the country. Of course you can make a larger donation if you feel so inclined. They also re-home cats. The only requirement is that the dog must live as part of the family, have an indoors bed and not be left in a shed or a dog run outside. Often these dogs have had traumatic experiences in the past and need lots of time, love and affection.

Dubh has been getting ready to move over the last couple of weeks and we have been getting ready to welcome her into our home. We have visited her several times, taking her for walks so she can get used to us and make the transition as smooth as possible. She is very intelligent and is a fast learner, already walking to heel and learning commands like sit and come.

We are very excited and happy to be getting a dog to share in our adventures and hope our cat will feel the same way. The cat was quite happy when we were looking after some friends dog for three weeks recently so we are optimistic. We had planned to wait a couple of more months before getting a dog as we wanted to be all finished with our extension, but who in their right mind could pass up the opportunity of having an addition like this to their family.

Now we have to get on with making a DIY bed for her out of an old suitcase. You will probably see a post about that here soon…

Behind the scenes.

August 6, 2015August 6, 2015mariamayfleming

When we were making the herb-vinegar and natural air-fresheners we wrote about last week one of the younger members of the family said ‘I don’t like blogs, they only show the pretty and tidy bits. Not what is really going on’.

She does have a very good point. Many blogs are filled with pretty, manicured pictures and stories. With carefully and artfully arranged photos. We know we fall into that category. When taking pictures we always try to exclude any mess and untidy area and crop away areas that don’t look pretty enough. Many people have told us the pictures are beautiful and the blog is pleasant and interesting to read but is it a true picture of what is going on? Not by a mile.

Our messy shed.

Building rubble and old bathroom roof mess, with a beautiful bonsai in the middle.

We are two and a half years into creating a productive garden for ourselves and the local wildlife. We are renovating and extending our cottage at the same time as keeping our family of six in clean clothes, cooking and eating reasonably healthy and regular meals and trying to keep the house clean and somewhat tidy. Those tasks can be quite difficult as our entire house measures 7.5 by 8.5 meters on the outside. With thick stone walls that leaves us with a total of about 45 square meters. It is almost impossible to keep it tidy with four teenagers and two adults sharing this space. When you have been hard at work for hours moving barrow-loads of manure, mixing cements, digging drainage ditches or weeding in the garden, it is hard to find the energy to defrost the fridge or face the mountain of dirty dishes in the kitchen. If we get a text or someone calls and tells us they are coming for a visit a few frantic moments follows when we are trying to tidy up the worst of the mess.

Floor sweepings and an unfinished corner of the kitchen.

Building mess.

I, the main writer of this blog walk around the garden and building site apologizing for the mess, telling people how difficult it is to keep on top of everything. Usually people are impressed with everything we have done since their last visit or if they are around for the first time interested in our somewhat unconventional building and gardening techniques and they don’t seem to mind the mess at all. So why this worry and panic about letting other people see the way things really are around here?

More shed mess.

Lots of people ask how we manage to do everything. The answer is that we don’t. The truth is that if we tried to stay on top of this mess, we would not have a lot of time over to build the extension or create the garden. Sometimes we tidy up a certain area only to find that it quickly reverts back to it’s old state. We are slowly moving from a complete mess all over the house and garden to a more finished and beautiful place but to try and not allow for any mess in the process would be a fatal mistake. We have decided to be brave in this post and show you what it really looks like around here. We think it will be a good thing as the main aim of this blog is to encourage others to do what we are doing. But if we portrait our journey as a painless, easy and always fun one it is probably not of much help. We are just like everyone else. We have good days and bad days. We have meltdowns and arguments. We even have piles of dirty washing and mounds of building rubble in the garden. Many days are full of slippery muck, cold rain and sore backs. But if we did not have any troubles and struggles we probably would not appreciate the sweet days as much. Days when we are all getting along brilliantly and the sun is shining and there is laughter all around the house and garden. Days filled with flowers and good food and friends.

Rubble mess.

Dirty window.

Another good thing with posting these pictures is that we don’t have to apologize the next time some of you call in for a visit. You will already know that we are not perfect…