Picture

Recommended books and journals

There are many, many books, journals and sites now that provide further information on the business of building houses (or other constructions) with straw bales. These two I found particularly useful:
Suppliers and miscellaneous sites

Here are some links to some of the organisations and individuals who helped us in various ways with the building of our house:

  • The Shelf Store provided our easily assembled and multi-purpose shelving system to house books and general clutter
  • Lakeland Paints supplied the healthy, breathable, water-based paints that we used on all our internal walls
  • We used Holkham linseed paints on our wooden beams. Imported from Sweden, they use linseed oil rather than solvents
  • Red Displays furnished the metal shelving units for our cassettes, records and CDs, but it seems they must have gone out of business
  • Our small but indispensable Kinetico water softener mollifies the ferociously hard water here
  • Our generously-proportioned oak dining table and chairs came from The Apple Orchard
  • I'm fortunate enough to sit on a very comfortable Herman Miller Aeron chair when stuck in front of the computer
  • A Mitsubishi Ecodan air-source heat pump provides the low-temperature hot water for our under-floor heating in winter
  • SWS UK roll-down aluminium shutters significantly increase the insulation in winter and allow insect-free currents of cooling air in summer
  • The lime we used as the principal ingredient for rendering the straw-bale walls came from St. Astier in the Dordogne
  • A small, family-run business south-west of Toulouse, Barthe supplied our beautiful terracotta floor tiles.

And finally...

A very talented ceramicist, Ingrid Squirrell, bought our old house in the Corrèze and made us our magnificent 'Lady' shown on this page. My dear friend and talented artist, Jacqui Gibello, has provided some lovely paintings for our walls.