Eight Acres

I know I keep saying that I hate cleaning, but now that we are in our new house, I have more motivation.  Firstly this house is way nicer than our old house, from the colour of the walls (that we chose of course) to the high ceilings and better lighting, I just enjoy being in the house more than ever before.  And I know how much effort went into getting it this nice so I don't want to see it getting dusty and dirty.   Permaculture principle "produce no waste" suggests that timely maintenance prevents wasteful rework and big jobs to fix things that could have taken very little time if they were done earlier.  This helps me to prioritise small cleaning jobs before they turn into big ones. One new thing that we have tried since moving is the ENJO range of cleaning products ( affiliate link ).  You won't find ENJO in your supermarket, its sold by independent consultants, and also available online ( I get a small commission if you use my links) . E...

It doesn't get seriously cold here, but its cold enough to be uncomfortable if we don't make some effort.  We are actually finding that our house up on the hill is warmer than down in the valley, and we are above the frost line, so that is a nice change, but it still gets down to 5degC overnight.  We have a woodstove, but we have to cut the wood ourselves, so you don't really want to use more wood than really necessary to keep the house warm. There are three ways that heat is lost from a building: Conduction - direct transfer of heat from a warm object to a cold object, this is heat lost through the walls and roof of your house to the cooler air Convection - caused by a flow of cold air, either draughts or air circulating around exposed windows  Radiation - heat transmitted in the form of light waves, this can be another source of heat loss from windows, roofs and walls of your house. When you understand how heat is lost, you can see the solutions for kee...

When the cabinet maker asked me where we wanted the microwave in the new kitchen I had a mental-blank.  I couldn't think where to put it and when I really thought about it, I didn't actually want a microwave.  We did still own one at that stage, but we hardly used it.  I find them kind of ugly and I don't completely trust them.  We haven't had a microwave in the new kitchen since we moved in Easter, and I really don't miss it. There may or may not be reasons to not eat microwaved food, but personally I don't like the taste of it and I don't like the look the microwave, so I'm happy not to have one in my kitchen.  When I considered whether to include a microwave in the new kitchen, I could only come up with three things: Defrosting meat Heating leftovers Heating wheat packs More suggestions here if you have other uses for your microwave. Defrosting meat without a microwave This one is pretty easy.  If you want a roast or a large chu...

This is an article that I wrote for The Owner Builder magazine.  If you're building a house (or thinking about it), this is a wonderful magazine for those interested in alternative building techniques and DIY options.  I have just submitted part 2 of this story since we moved in, so I thought it was about time to share part 1 here.  If you are building I'm sure they would love to publish your story too, just get in touch via the website . ***** In mid-2012 my husband, Peter, and I bought a 258 acre property in the small South Burnett settlement of Kumbia (near Kingaroy) in Queensland, with the intention of eventually building a house and setting up a small farm. Over a year later we were still trying to decide what type of house to build. Both of us were keen to use a sustainable building method, as we like natural materials and hate waste, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what would suit our property. Then we came across a removal house in our local area, adver...

I've never been a big fan of houseplants.  I had one on a dresser for a while and it leaked and cracked the veneer.  And I had another one that didn't get enough sun and it died.  Our new house is sunnier and less cluttered, it just felt like it needed some plants.  I've had others that I overwatered, or underwatered.  Its just seemed too hard to keep them alive. Mother-in-laws-tongue in the bathroom Benefits of houseplants You might be wondering why I would bother with houseplants, seeing as I just said I don't really like them.  I haven't actually read any scientific studies, but its does seem pretty obvious that plants are going to improve indoor air quality.  If you google it you will find lists of up to 15 benefits, I guess its just one of those topics that attracts fluff articles.  A basic knowledge of biology tells me that plants suck up carbon dioxide and convert it to oxygen.  This is probably more useful in the city, as w...

This post is a bit late as we've had the kitchen finished for a while, but its given me a chance to try out some of the features of the design so I can tell you how they worked out.  The only thing left to do is paint a small section of ceiling, so please ignore the blue masking tape! We had an cabinet maker design our kitchen after the wood floors were done.  I had already done a very rough design using the Ikea online kitchen design tool.  This confirmed to me that we would NOT be using Ikea as it did not fit well in the odd space of our kitchen!  But at least I was able to show that to the cabinet maker to get us started.  He measured everything and asked me way too many questions, and then went and drew it out in his software.  So unlike the bathroom, where I had full control of the design , I was not able to check everything as I only had the limited time when we I met with the cabinet maker to look at the design in detail.  Fortunately the...

Can you believe it!?  After owning our 258 acre property Cheslyn Rise at Kumbia for about five years and working on the house here for nearly four years, we had a week off work before Easter to get things ready and we finally moved in!  We have no couches (order is coming in to the shop any day now) and there are boxes everywhere, but we are loving it here. We built a yard to keep the dogs on the property (and not wandering away to round up other people's cattle), we moved all the chickens and the chicken tractors on the car trailer and we have nearly everything we need here.  Except for internet.  We are just using mobile data at the moment, so I might not blog much until we get that sorted again.  The NBN are "updating their website" as our property does not come up in the fixed wireless zone, but when I checked the map our house is in the zone, just not the entire property, so they said they can change that, but I don't know how long it will take an...

We are nearly ready to move house, actually we are in a constant process of moving things from one house to the other, and more correctly, we are nearly ready to permanently live in our secondhand house at Cheslyn Rise. getting used to the "no dogs inside" rule Too things have sparked my interest in minimalism and decluttering recently: 1) we have lived here at Eight Acres for eight years now and have accumulated a lot of stuff.  Our last move from the Lockyer Valley was paid for by my company and so a team of people came to the house and packed everything.  I remember unpacking the boxes and thinking "why did we bother to move this!?".  Some of it was just silly, but as the move was paid for, we didn't rationalise what we moved.  This time we are moving ourselves, with no moving truck or people to help, just loading stuff on the ute and car trailer, so I don't want to waste effort moving anything that we are not going to use. 2) our ho...

A friend of mine is considering moving to a new block of land and building a house.  She has similar goals and lifestyle to me, so she asked what we considered when designing our house.  I guess she assumed that we had it all figured out.  The funny part is, the main reason that it took us over a year to get a house organised, and in the end we just bought a secondhand house and moved it, BECAUSE we couldn't decide what we wanted in a house.  ( read more about our secondhand house here ) More correctly, we couldn't decide if we should build what we wanted or build it to suit mainstream tastes, for resale value.  The main sticking point was the ensuite.  We have always lived in a house with one bathroom.  We are happy with that and would build a house with one bathroom, but new houses typically come with an ensuite and a walk in wardrobe.  Both things that we don't particularly need.  Finding the secondhand house, we overcome that proble...

If it feels like its taking us a LONG time to finish our house, it is.   We first saw the house in December 2012 .   It was moved to our property on the back of a truck in July 2013 ( full tour with BEFORE photos here ).   We got council approval for it in July 2014 .  Then we replaced the roof, and started working on stripping back each room (including removing floor coverings, asbestos , all fittings from the kitchen and bathroom) and gradually painting and renovating .   The bathroom was fitted out about in the middle of last year , but it took us ages to get back to painting it as we had other rooms to work on first.   We painted the outside of the house with the help of my parents early last year (there is still a bit left to do, but its looks so much better). A few months ago we had the new hardwood ironbark floor installed .  Now we are just waiting for the cabinet maker to build the kitchen (and then the plumber to plumb it, the electrician...