The owner builder sign, decorated for the Scarecrow Carnival

Once upon a time....

A council discovered that there was a couple living happily (ever-after) on their land in a railway carriage.

The councilors conferred and decided that this was not a good thing and that they should (for their own good) be made to conform with the rules which had been drawn up for the “good of all citizens”.

And so a messenger was dispatched to tell them they must build or live elsewhere for 9 months of the year.

Upon payment of a substantial fee, the council would consent to allowing them to camp on their land for 3 whole months out of each and every year.

And so the journey began

The process first required that we petition the council to build a structure, of which they approved, to shelter us on our land. We would have to pay them for their approval.

However their approval was not to be purchased lightly and we must first have plans drawn up - to their specifications - which would determine what the structure was to become.

Eventually we submitted these drawings - the “slab layout” (the final position of the walls has been added in beige).

You can see that the only slab mentioned is in the bathroom the rest was to be earth.

The “slab layout” which we used as a floor plan

Unfortunately because the drawing was called a slab layout the council wanted to impose constraints - appropriate for a slab no doubt - to the whole floor construction which became a point of contention for some time.

and the cross section

Variations

There were several other drawings of various details and different sections and views. In the course of the construction many changes were made as details became obvious. The council insisted that must pay them for a “variation approval” each and every time.

This process could take some time to complete (we did go through it once) and often the improvement would only become obvious when we were about to do the work in question.

In many cases we elected to proceed with the superior choice and support the creative flow, none of the building inspections ever questioned our choices.

post-haste

Fergus & Norman at work on the trial project

The building team

Our main concern at this point was our lack of experience - I did an “Owner-builders course” at TAFE - a pre-requisite for council approval. This was mainly focused on bureaucratic concerns such as insurance, paperwork, certification, compliance with little mention of the practicalities of building a structure.

The universe intervened and connected us with Norman Coleman - an ex-builder who agreed to work with me on a trial project to see if we worked well together.

We enjoyed working together to create a set of stairs from the railway carriage to the building site and so the building team was assembled.

Before we go on - if you put the kettle on, has it boiled yet?

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