Lovely friends have emailed me and posted on fb about that last post.  Yay!

Kindly, they thought we did quite well J.

And Dave asked if we were living in our home permanently?  And was it warm and quiet?

Yes, Dave - to all J.

But (I have to have a but…ok, three buts – one for each) – we haven’t unpacked everything yet, we still feel a hint of cold and, while it is quiet from outside to inside, the inside of the house is reasonably noisy.

Now, none of these is a criticism at all, just observations.  This house is just lovely to live in and we love so many features – my favourite is the eastern gable window (I just love the light and sunshine streaming in every morning – it makes rainbows on the floor J) and Michael’s favourite is the jarrah boxed-in beam (he likes how it looks like it ‘belongs’).

So, would we change anything?  Hmm, now I was thinking about this last night – because since we have moved in and realised the inside sounds get through the walls, I had thought I would say that we would not use wool batts again as internal insulation, but when I thought again about why we chose them, the reasons would make me choose them all over again over any other product (the clincher was I still would have wanted a natural, low-processed product).

There are some other things that I thought too I might have changed – and the only one left that is a ‘maybe’ (all the rest have grown on me ;-) is that if the northern wall was full strawbale, we would have internal render on it and be able to look at the lovely character there too.  If you don’t remember (and there is not much reason why you would, eh?), it is a ‘faux’ straw wall = stuffed straw and render on the outside, plywood (for strength to stuff against) inside. But the reasons for doing it that way are still valid too (water isolation mainly) so, no regrets.

Do I really love this house this much? 

Yep, pretty much.  I am still spending time just looking around and appreciating all that is lovely – walls (love our strawbale character – all the dings and bumps; love the white paint colour on all the other walls still too); bathroom tiles and bath (still love the colour and pattern and so nice to relax in solar hot water); jarrah kitchen benchtop (swoon – seriously love this!  And not at all difficult to put in the effort to look after it); doors and door handles (what is not to love?); recycled colourbond ceilings (love seeing all their colours and dings, bumps and scratches).   And I love too, that, after many, many months, we finally have real couches to sit on again and real crockery for eating.  It’s the small things folks, the small things.

But this big thing, our home, *is* very, very special.