When we first decided to make the big ‘Sea Change’, moving from the city to the bush, we weren’t exactly sure where we were going to live. We knew we would like to build our own home and that we liked the idea of mudbricks but we didn’t realise the work that would go into our lifestyle change.
My husband or myself had absolutely no building experience whatsoever. I am a horticulturist and my husband is a musician so give us a shovel and a guitar and we were both happy. We had never laid a brick, thought about trusses or wondered on the finer points of water proofing! Oh how all that was about to change…especially for my husband.
We moved into a gorgeous area that was in the bush but close to the ocean. My parents live in the same area and they have a huge 10acre block of land. Most of it is bush. One night over a family dinner the idea was put to my husband and I by my parents “Why don’t you build yourselves a little mudbrick cabin on our land here. You don’t have to live in town and pay rent that way and it can be your own little place.” Well we thought that would be just great. So our ‘little’ cabin that turned into a HUGE project began.
Our wonderful neighbours gave us the loan of their caravan so this is where we first lived while we lay the foundations of our cabin.
It had an annexe on the side and every time it rained my husband would jump up on a stool with a tube of silicon to fix the leaks! We had old wood pallets on the floor and then carpet on top of that.
It was freezing in the Winter and boiling hot in the Summer.
My husband and I slept up one end of the caravan and our daughter who was 6 at this stage, slept up the other end. I wish I had more photos to show you of our caravan life but I didn’t have a digital camera then and so most of my shots were taken on an Instamatic. I think we lived in the caravan for a good 2 years or so. Some people would say it was ‘character building.’
I have written in a previous post about the fact that we made all our mud bricks or ‘muddies’ as we affectionately called them by hand. I had a few people ask me how we actually did that. Well, the cement mixer was a really integral part of the whole process. We would mix 1 mixer full of clay with 1 shovel full of cement. Mix it all around with water till well blended then shovel into the moulds. The clay we used for the very first part of our cabin was actually off our land. For the second part of our home, we bought in our clay from a quarry.
Most of the days spent making muddies were stinking hot and it was very heavy work. Each muddie would weigh on average around 18kg.
Most of the mud brick making fell to my husband with a bit of help every now and then from my brother. I think we would make on average about 120 bricks a day and around 70 if working alone. The first lot of bricks we made were quite crumbly and our cabin is in need of repair inside where cracks and fissures have appeared. We became better at them though and they are now ripper muddies!
Our mud brick making days have finished thank goodness sadly.
This part of the house is now finished. At this end are the two kids bedrooms and our bathroom ( which is not finished).
We have been in the process of building our own home now for 6 years. We have owner built and pretty much done every thing ourselves. We are very lucky though to have the help from my father who has also built his own mudbrick home. It has taken such a long time and my husband is certainly ‘over it’ but deep down inside I know he loves and treasures our home made with his own hands.
Sometimes people say to us, “Haven’t you finished it yet?” with a look of incredulity on their faces. This annoys us both as it isn’t a race for us to complete it…although I would ADORE having a bathroom and hot running water…what a luxury! When we started building we had both just moved here and had no other prior commitments. Now we are both working, I own a 7 day a week retail business and we have 2 small children. One of which decided to pop into our lives right in the middle of muddie making. We had to adjust our plan then and incorporate another bedroom for the little fella.
My kids still get bathed in a bucket every now and then, although we did have a solar shower for a while there. I sometimes think about putting it back up but then I worry it might mean the ‘real’ shower might take a bit longer. It might not, it’s just a niggly kinda worry.
When we finished the first little part of our home, which by now you have probably guessed we call ‘the cabin’, we all moved into it. Our little boy was only a few months old and it was in the middle of Winter. We put a Patriot wood fire in and it warmed up the cabin beautifully. So we all shared the one room, all in together.
Where the beds are is now our kitchen and there is a entrance way knocked into the wall at the top left that goes out into the new part of the house.
As you can imagine it was pretty chaotic at times..but it really was character building 
