The Situation

When my family moved onto our farm, the farmhouse was in decent shape but pretty small for two artists, a home-schooled child, a business and multiple volunteering activities. On top of that, my husband was disabled, and the small rooms just didn't work well for him. Within a year of moving, I knew we needed to expand the house if it was going to be functional for our family.

Problems and Issues Encountered

Before moving to our farm, my husband and I had dreamed of building a home that had renewable energy, solar heating and was a straw-bale construction, so we decided to bring elements of that across into the addition. The problem was, nobody in our region had built a straw-bale home, especially the load-bearing style that we were trying to make happen. In our very rural area, there are no codes, so we didn't have a code board or building inspector to ask what had been tried in our area. We had to choose whether to go ahead with that style or use straw bales for fill in a post and beam construction. With many acquaintances saying they wanted to help, we decided to try the load-bearing style construction.

The problem ended up being that there were a lot of people who said they wanted to learn about it and help, but when we scheduled work days, nobody would show up. I was stuck trying to build the walls, lifting straw bales weighing more than 50 pounds up a ladder — and often up over my head — and then pinning them into place using wood stakes. We finally had the walls up and started working on building the framing, second floor and roof. Unfortunately, the rains started at that point. Some of the bales got wet and had to be replaced. Others settled and fell out of the wall.

I solved the problem by putting post-and-beam supports in place to hold the roof. It didn't fix the problem with many of the bales, so I put a frame wall in and used slip straw, a mixture of straw and a clay slurry, to infill the walls, backed by a concrete block wall. One benefit of this was that I could change the locations and sizes of windows and doors, taking care of some potential problems we were going to have once the structure was complete.

We also planned on installing a lot of green technology, such as a composting toilet system, gray water recycling, rainwater cisterns, renewable energy and solar heating. This was a lot of new technology, even with my light residential contracting background, and proved to be too many new systems to plan. If I'd taken more planning time, it would have been much easier to get things into place instead of figuring out a work-around for another system.

I definitely didn't think about the toll it would take on my family. My husband had a harder time getting around with all the construction, we had more arguments, and I wasn't able to take care of what needed to be done in the house with all the work I was doing on the addition.

What I Would Do Differently

I would probably go to a few residential contractors and ask what they had seen done in the region already instead of making a very expensive mistake and assuming it would be OK. I would definitely plan on only having my family for labor instead of counting on volunteers! I would probably hire in some contractors for parts of the work that I hadn't been familiar with before, at least to hold my hand through part of it.

My Advice For Others

Among the things I didn't take into account were that the addition was going to be a much larger sink for time, effort and money than I had anticipated or budgeted for. Suddenly, the construction saying of, "It will take twice as long and cost twice as much as you think," makes a lot of sense! One way to keep the expense down is to shop at Habitat for Humanity ReStores, Craigslist, building material outlets, and similar places to get deals on the materials you need, and I would highly recommend it.

A major remodel or addition can put a lot of stress on your family and really disrupt your life, so you need to be prepared for that. You won't just be putting energy into the changes you're making; you'll be limited on how much time, energy and money you can put into daily life, as well. Make sure you have a good plan going in, and it will help keep you on course when things go a little crazy.