Mud, wood and ‘jewels’ - The Owner Builder Munro.pdf · Mud, wood and ‘jewels ... It had been...

42 THE OWNER BUILDER � 190 August/September 2015 � © www.theownerbuilder.com.au

Mud, wood and ‘jewels’Eclectic, artistic and affordable home

natural pool in the creek. It had been a cream farm cum piggery, as was once common; cows milked for the cream to be sold, the leftover skim milk for the pigs, while corn was also grown for the pigs.

Surviving owner building

The house had a more recent Hardiplank kitchen addition, which is still there. The original section is now an open ‘carport.’ However, the dwelling as it was offered decent shelter for the family. Bob says that Kathleen was not a tent or caravan person; she’d insisted on a house with ‘running water and clean sheets so we can be comfortable while you do your little hobby’ – aka owner building nearby.

This was just as well, since the house took six and a half years to build from its start in 1992. Kathleen, sadly now deceased, was clearly a wise woman. I am to see that she was also a talented and whimsically artistic one.

Whilst building the house, Bob, a teacher of Industrial Arts as the subject was known then, was working full-time. Plus, with a family background in horticulture, he’d always planted and propagated and had big gardens, and sold extra vegies and plants.

Here he planted many trees to make a charming setting for this charming house, and established extensive vegetable gardens. In fact, I fi rst heard of him locally as ‘Bob the Plant Man;’ I’d bought some of his offerings at his occasional morning roadside spot where he leaves them and an honesty box. It was months later that I heard of the fairytale house he’d built.

Bob didn’t like project homes and suburban identical rows and restrictions; he wanted enough space and freedom to build something he liked, more in keeping with the environment, mostly of natural materials, at his own pace and on a low budget, no mortgage.

Choosing mud

He had restored several houses but never built one from scratch. From extensive research in magazines and books he realised the wide and ancient use of mud brick globally. He decided to build a pole frame and the steep gable roof fi rst, and infi ll with varying methods of using mud, plus timber from the block.

Back in the early 1990s, Bob and Kathleen were searching the NSW mid-north coast hinterland for land on which to raise their young family of four boys. They wanted good soil and water, but were limited by their small budget.

Rejecting all the adequately sized blocks with only a dam for water, they fi nally decided to buy a much bigger and wilder property that had been passed in at auction. It was in a beautiful secluded valley, with a wide cleared alluvial creek fl at, and clean water rushing by in a rocky creek bed. Bob thought he could make a go of it there.

There was an existing old but liveable house, sited near a large and picturesque

BY SHARYN MUNRO

Top: The decorative arts are integral here.Left: Bob and Kathleen – a great team.Opposite page: Mud and timber in unity.P

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THE OWNER BUILDER � 190 August/September 2015 � © www.theownerbuilder.com.au 43 THE OWNER BUILDER � 190 August/September 2015 � © www.theownerbuilder.com.au 43

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And of course, second-hand materials too; they already had a good collection of old doors and windows, and kept adding to it from local demolition yards and junk shops.

The north-facing stage one rectangle was built as a trial. He found plenty of suitable soil further up the valley and brought it down to site. The mud was mixed in a box trailer with straw and a handful of white cement to stabilise; the mixing machinery was the family’s feet. Bob says the family just kept making bricks. The proportion of cement used was ‘what seemed right;’ intuition, the same method as Kathleen, and later daughter Merinda, used in cooking.

White mahogany logs were used for the poles, as they are best in the ground here. Over concrete footings, river rock stabilised with steel bars infi lled between the poles and locked into them. Each wall

contains different materials and methods as appropriate to its aspect.

The mud walls were fi nished with a mud slurry to which BondCrete was added. It has held up well. Bob points out where birds keen to grab straw have pulled, bringing bits of mud with it. He doesn’t mind, seeing it as natural and part of the aging process.

As always, where different materials meet, problems can occur due to different shrinkage rates and lack of adhesion. Where the wall plate meets the corrugated metal roof was a problem; Bob mixed mortar and added BondCrete to seal that edge.

Stage one was completed before stage two was started, with the two joined by an enclosed breezeway.

The gable end walls are mud brick, laid fl at lower down and then on their sides higher up, to be lighter. Bricks are rectangular, 339 x 260 x 100mm. They connect with builders’ ties to each vertical timber, which are skew nailed into the mud brick as well.

Strapping criss crosses these high walls, and the timber frame is all bolted together; Bob used threaded rod and nuts

Anticlockwise from above: Shower recess with mosaic edge and slate pieces fl oor; mezzanine storage area, given a sailing ship air; stage two wasn’t started until stage one was complete; charming Tudor-inspired bump-out window seat.

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THE OWNER BUILDER � 190 August/September 2015 � © www.theownerbuilder.com.au 45

all through. So even in a huge fl ood the structure would keep its integrity even if the mud washed out – not that it has ever fl ooded here or is likely to.

Bob did obtain a satisfactory engineer’s report on it. Otherwise it was ‘all from my mind and what I considered good for the family; good honest design, practical, and fi tting in with the environment.’

Wavy timber and whimsy

Above the wall plates on the gable ends, and on lower northern walls, cladding is of random rough-sawn bloodwood or fl ooded gum boards. To get these delightfully natural wavy edges, the tree is cut through the middle, laid on its edge, and then sliced through, using bark, sapwood and heartwood, so needs to be used in sheltered areas only.

A portable Lucas Mill was brought in as needed. One timber score that didn’t need it was a bridge full of surprisingly unweathered sleepers, used for the rear wall of stage two. External timbers were painted with whatever oils Bob could get free or cheaply. As a termite deterrent

he mixes oil with creosote and regularly injects that into 150mm deep holes drilled into the base of the poles.

Visually, the house could be from another time. I am reminded of Rob Hadden’s creations at Castlemaine! Bob says he loves anything handmade but especially in the mediaeval style. He loves fantasy too, and I will see many examples of this.

Some of the effect comes from the many and varied leadlight windows and doors. Bought before the building, all were broken; Bob repaired them and built to suit them.

But this house is truly eclectic and individual. Bob likes to try things he has seen, like the quaint Tudor-style diamond-paned window seat that extends to the outside. He now regrets not making this bigger, so it could have become a curtained alcove bed inside. Bob learnt that certain features are fi ne in their own context where they are

verandah

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Above right: Leadlights above window seat.Right: Wavy random rough sawn boards meet the brick fi replace section.

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Arrow letters refer to photos

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local summers, having one room – the living room – air conditioned is a boon. Typically, he disguised its unaesthetic appearance with a cover of old pressed metal panels.

Kathleen’s glass kingdomWe enter the cottage via simple, solid

and beautiful handmade screen doors, from pole slab edges that are inset with coloured glass in holes that go right through, to be visible from both sides. They set the scene for the treasures within.

My eye is immediately drawn to the attractively dense overhead strip of decorations, from last Christmas – also Kathleen’s last; an indication of her individual visual style, combining fake fi r branches, silver and gold baubles, strings of pearls and fairy lights. Her impact is very present in her many beautiful glass light shades and window decorations and glass and bead mosaics. She used copper foil rather than lead in her ‘leadlights,’ as they are only for internal use.

Bob says Kathleen hated the cobwebs that are inevitable in a rustic house with rough timbers like this, so cobwebs became a theme in her artwork. They are unique, fanciful, asymmetric and quite lovely.

KitchenNor was Kathleen a fan of some of

Bob’s improvisations from second-hand materials. Like the pantry cupboard made to fi t a French door; too small for keen cooks like Kathleen and now Merinda, so

the norm, but may not work so well in isolation in your own place.

There is much to wonder at and admire here. On the western end, where windows were kept fairly small against the summer sun, there is an upper Juliet balcony, above decorative zinc coated metal awnings, c. 1930.

A large pergola on the north takes care of summer sun there. It is planted with deciduous wisteria and ornamental grape; Bob admits he made the mistake of planting a fruiting white grape on one side, as the grapes falling or being broken off by birds makes a slippery mush on the ground.

Bob did say he likes to try various methods. On the north, I am surprised to fi nd cordwood infi ll walls and verandah fl oor. Sawdust was added to the stabilised mud around lumps of wood, slices of fence posts, bottles and found bits of china.

The curving chimney is a melange of second-hand painted and unpainted bricks and old glazed pottery bottles. Bob knows an open fi re is not as effi cient as a slow combustion one but considers the pleasure he and Kathleen had over years of watching the fl ames and embers well worth it.

Grid-connected solar panels provide power; Bob feels that in the humid

Anticlockwise from above: Wall cladding of second-hand sleepers; Bob’s take on the double sink; cordwood infi ll surrounds second-hand doors and windows; reversed pressed metal lining for kitchen walls.


several other cupboards and open shelves have been pressed into service as pantry space too.

Or like the sink. Kathleen had wanted a double sink, so next to the old green ceramic single bowl sink, Bob inset a rough beaten copper bowl into the end of the bench. He recalls that Kathleen reckoned it was ‘a poor alternative.’

Apart from the cook’s large gas stove, there’s a Rayburn slow combustion stove which also heats the water. In this eastern wall Bob had incorporated a small external door for loading fi rewood to this stove but it was rarely used, he says.

For outdoor cooking he’s built a pizza oven in the yard, with an old disc saw blade as its door; he has now made about fi ve for other people.

I note the indented pressed metal panels on the walls in the kitchen; as they had fi ve coats of paint on the main embossed side, Bob laid them back to front and sealed their bare backs. He’s kept vestiges of the old paint on lightly sanded timber cupboard doors and panels, being ahead of his time with the distressed look now popular.

Old Victorian tiles have been used as a colourful splashback to the natural-edged blue gum slab bench top. For a much-used area, the bench top was very successfully sealed – and easily refurbished – with pure tung oil, which Bob recommends highly from his experience.

Pure tung oil was also used for the fl oor, which has an unusual history. Of narrow (50mm) tallowwood boards, Bob bought it as one whole laid fl oor, from an old theatre, where it was the long morning tea room attached to the side of the main building. He cut the long fl oor in half with a chainsaw, to be able to lay one section on the ground fl oor here and one in the loft above. A crane lifted them out and brought them here.

Note: some products called tung oil also contain a sealant, which will form a skin that has to be sanded for refurbishment; look for pure tung oil.

Loft

I can imagine how the grandchildren would love all the fairytale touches here, but timber barriers had to be erected top and bottom of the cute winding stairs to the loft for them. Upstairs are plentiful beds and toys. Bob points out that he

deliberately raised the wall height by putting the top plate at about 1200mm, then setting the rafters for the steep roof off that height. This gave more head room, plus ‘you can use more of the fl oor plan and place standard furniture fl at against the wall.’

People do usually fi nd it hard to keep lofts cool, and Bob says in this climate it is too hot in summer up here even with gable end vents and dormer windows – but it’s great for winter.

Wet area lessons

Next to the large open kitchen/dining area is a laundry, a separate toilet with old-fashioned cistern and pull chain, and the bathroom. This boasts a picture skylight, a stunning mirror frame of glass mosaic and a shower hob eye-catchingly inset with bright mosaics – all by Kathleen.

Bob agreed with her that the rock fl oor and brick shower wall, although sealed with BondCrete, proved hard to clean. Similarly, so did the basin splashback of rough sleeper timber.

The fl oors in these wet areas are of slate, obtained as free leftovers from a houseful that had been professionally laid. Bob laid them in a conventional grid

Top: Vine-covered pergolas shade the northern side of the house in summer.Above: Rustic bathroom, with son Daniel’s hand-tiled fl oor and Kathleen’s glowingly fanciful mirror.

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in the toilet, then realised he didn’t have enough to do the bathroom, hall and laundry like this.

His eldest son, 14-year old Daniel, came up with the idea of breaking them into pieces and laying them randomly, using more cement grout to fi ll out the area. Bob broke them up and maintained a pile for the kneeling Daniel to choose from and lay into the cement mix, using a screed to smooth over and keep the slight slope to the drain as he went. It took him 14 hours straight to fi nish the job. On his knees!

I’m impressed by the endurance but also by Daniel’s confi dence and good eye for shape and pattern.

Fiery heart

In the stage two high main living area, the tall and handsome rendered fi replace is the heart. Its pouting mouth is decorated with a copper lip inset with ‘jewels’ glued in with heatproof silicone. Based on the Count Rumford chimney design for the internal shape, its damper is as much for stopping fl ies in summer as controlling air fl ow.

The high cathedral ceiling in here is lined with shiplapped Australian red cedar. At one gable end is a large coloured glass circular window, at the other a storage mezzanine hidden behind draped ‘sail’ fabric and ropes, to simulate a shipboard feeling, echoing the ‘mast’ of the central supporting pole in the room

The mezzanine is accessed by a sapling ladder, made by the boys when they were

aged about six to 13. Bob gave them a hand saw and drill and set them to fi nd the saplings in the bush, cut to size, and bolt together with threaded rod; his main brief was that the top be wide enough for him to fi t through.

Kathleen’s lights drip with crystals; fi shing fl oats, glass balls and giant bears adorn the upper reaches, while glass fl agons and bottles containing different coloured food dyes glow as insets into free form cob infi ll walls. Bob has taken advantage of fairly narrow panel spaces between timber uprights to use this decorative method in several places. He advises that the colours hold so long as the bottles are not in direct sunlight.

Bedrooms

A gothic-style church door leads to the main bedroom; along with a heap of altar rails, it was picked up in Mittagong at a garage sale, and stored for years until it found its rightful place here. This light fi lled bedroom has windows on the north plus French doors between cordwood walls at the east end of the verandah.

The middle bedroom is the only one totally of mud, external and two internal walls of mud brick, and one of poured earth, which did have some shrinkage issues as infi ll. A third bedroom at the rear is occupied by Merinda, who is studying graphic design; I had noticed her large photo collages in several rooms of the house. She keeps updating these, she says. With such parents, living in such a house, it’s easy to see from whence her

artistic sense is derived and why she has chosen such a career.

While Bob and Kathleen built most of their home themselves, the four boys – Daniel, Simon, Brett and Gareth – helped a lot, says Bob. They joke that this building ‘stole their childhood,’ but they love coming back here and bringing their children here. I’ll bet the kids adore it too, what with the pool in the creek, the timber bridge, the garden, the many small treasures inside…

It’s a home to be proud of being involved in its creation.

For me, it’s a perfect example of the best of owner building in that it has been designed and built to suit and express the individual, not the norm. There is certainly nothing of a mass-produced project home here, and Bob surely did ‘make a go’ of this place. �

� Rumford fi replace

Rumford fi replaces are tall and shallow to refl ect more heat, and they have streamlined throats to eliminate turbulence and carry away the smoke with little loss of heated room air. See TOB 124 Aug/Sep 2004 for detail on building a Rumford fi replace.

www.rumford.com

� BondCrete

Versatile bonding and sealing agent.08 6272 3800www.bondall.com/bondcrete

Links & resources

Left: Bob tried out various infi ll techniques between the poles.Above: Dining under Christmas lights in the the open kitchen and dining area.Right: Imposing Rumford style fi replace.

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Producing timber with your own logs

Ian Schulz is one of the ‘tech guys’ at Lucas Mill. He has a long history with and love of wood, which he gets fairly passionate about. Here he shares some hints and tips with us.

When it comes to using timber

around your house there are not many

things it can’t be used for. I have even

seen it used for a bath and wash basin

in the bathroom.

It pays to know what species you

have, as some are better suited to

outdoor and in ground use than others.

This doesn’t mean the other species

you have are no good, it just means

they are better suited for internal use.

Local knowledge is a useful tool to

use for species identifi cation; otherwise

the books by Leon Costermans are very

useful. Once you know the species,

‘Wood in Australia’ by Keith R. Bootle

is a good reference, which will give

you the timber properties and uses for

most of the commonly used species in

Australia.

The moisture content is another

consideration that needs to be made.

Depending on use, if it is going to

be used outside in the weather the

moisture content is not as important

as if it is going to be used internally. As

a guide, you need to rack timber out to

dry for at least one year for every 25mm

of thickness.

It wasn’t that long ago that all the

hardwood framing in a house was

put up green, straight off the saw and

then given six months to settle before

fi tting out. If using hardwood timber for

framing or decking, then six or more

months of air drying will make fi tting

out a lot easier.

To meet building regulations,

timber used for structural purposes

needs to meet all relevant Australian

Standards. This is not diffi cult to

achieve; there are a number of training

providers though out Australia, like

Timber Training Creswick, who offer

timber grading courses as well as

portable sawmilling and drying courses.

When selecting logs for milling:

• Try and keep the logs straight by cutting

them into shorter lengths at bends; this

makes it easier to cut straight timber

from the shorter lengths and reduces the

number of pieces with heart in them.

Editor’s note: Heart, also known as the corewood or inner heart, is the wood adjacent to and including the pith that is within 50mm of the centre of the pith. It is prone to splitting.

• Try and keep knots and limbs within

300–600mm from the end; this way

if you have to dock to meet grade

requirements, you may be able to use it

as a shorter length for something else.

Hardwoods in particular have growth

stresses to help them stay upright when

growing; as the tree matures it no longer

requires the growth stresses and will relax

them. Growth stresses cause the timber to

bend off the intended straight line when

sawn.

There are number of thing you can do to

reduce the movement during sawing. One

rule to remember is that if you double the

length, you quadruple the movement.

Therefore use your small diameter logs

for short lengths (2.4–3.6m) as this will

reduce movement during sawing. Keep

your large diameter logs and logs with

a pipe up the middle of them for long

lengths; a log with a pipe in it will not

move around much at all.

Editor’s note: A pipe is a hollow section sometimes found in a log.

Cutting the timber for your own

home will no doubt leave you feeling

exhausted at the end of the day, but the

feeling of satisfaction you will get every

time you see and feel the fi nished work

will always outlast that tired feeling.

Happy milling! �

� Lucas Mill

The portable sawmill has a circular saw blade that swings from horizontal to vertical, can be setup over the log on the ground in most terrains, and provides a cost effective way of producing timber for all your owner builder needs.

03 5728 7283, www.lucasmill.com

Links & resources

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Mud, wood and ‘jewels’ - The Owner Builder Munro.pdf · Mud, wood and ‘jewels ... It had been...

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