The house made of straw!

In our demolition we began to see what we thought was an early form of OSB (Oriented Strand Board), but it didn’t look right. As Ian hacked away at the wall in the kitchen he realised that the wall we were hoping to remove between the kitchen and living room wasn’t actually attached to the ceiling, so that’s good news, it isn’t a supporting wall.

But that OSB looked really odd…. and then I hear him shouting (I’m washing the ceiling in the bedroom) “Liz, Liz, the wall is made of straw”…….. I think he’s lost the plot, that mask has impacted his O2 levels…. but no, it really is straw… every internal wall is made of Stramit (basically glued together straw). Now, this is good news for removing a wall – and we later learn there are no supporting walls internally at all, but possibly not so good for fixing heavy items to walls and channelling cables, or fixing kitchen wall cupboards(!). We will have to work on that later and plans will probably change.

Just as we are discussing what this means for us, and how we can just take down the wall if only we have a reciprocating saw, we hear a “hello” from the front door (well the step – nobody comes in with this smell). A neighbour has popped by to introduce himself and see what we are up to, turns out he too has a bungalow of exactly the same design across the road and came to see if he can offer any help with tools etc, and mention the straw issue. Can you believe it? He has a saw and offers to lend it to us…. before you know it the wall is down and we have a very different home. By the end of the day 4 neighbours have been to welcome us, one with a bottle of homebrew strawberry wine, an offer of dinner and the opportunity to visit an open plan renovated bungalow to get some ideas of what we can do. 

People have been so lovely, even the postman, DPD and Hermes delivery folks stop for a chat (we have a lot of deliveries of building supplies!) welcome us and generally ensure we know we have done the right thing moving here. 

Within a couple of days - more demolition, excessive washing and painting the ceilings with oil based primer the smell is almost gone and we are exhausted!