A couple of years ago, just before lockdown, we bought a block of land, up in the hills of Kinglake. Here we are building a cottage made of love and cob, a home of mud pies and patties, and I’m inviting you to join us on this journey.
I want with this house to show what is possible, building in a sustainable and natural way, creating a home that is unique to my family and its needs, a place for ceremony and creating joy, work and play.
We are currently designing the house – eventually, we want a large living area, with a kitchen, dining space and a sacred circle built in. We have dreams of dragon bookshelves and sculpted walls alive with detail, but let’s see how we go! It has to be big enough to hold a modest-sized women’s circle, but small enough that we can build the main walls of the building in one summer – ideally getting done the main space, one bathroom and the laundry, making it possible to live in.
I’ve also always, always wanted a library, so the second summer we aim to build the library, a bedroom and another bathroom. And in the final summer, we’ll build the final two bedrooms. A quote in Ianto Evans, <> book The Hand-Sculpted House says that when you’ve finished your home, you’re finished with life – this home is intended to be a work in progress that can be added to until we die.
The home is inspired by designs from nature, permaculture principles and looking at what works, and what doesn’t, where we are now. One thing that I find doesn’t work, is a kitchen of parallel lines, which encourages children, and dogs, to run round the island bench (and they do!), so it’s important to me to have a snug U-shaped kitchen, and then, because we plan to grow food, to have a nice big pantry alongside.
My partner, an architect (so a lot of unschooling needed there!) is drawing up plans based on a sketch I drew, and we’re trying to find compromise between my radical love of curves and his educated belief in boxes. Let’s see how we go!
We’ll also have an outdoor kitchen, with a cob oven (or three!) for entertaining – we’ve just finished the foundations for the first oven, learning quite a lot along the way, and I’m going to fill the rubble/ stone foundation with a bit of cob to smooth the top and some of the rougher edges, before starting on the rougher edges.
