Wednesday 14 August 2013

Mega update!

Repointing - this is what our wall looked
like after scraping & wire brushing all
the old mortar out [except upright]
Everyone has been busy since May, which is great, but we've neglected the blog a bit, so here's a quick rundown. Look what we've been up to...

herbs & pallet benches [bike sculptures were from last year]

Finished repointing!
Mixing new mortar for the repointing,
using a sharp sand and lime mix
Lots of lovely people came to help on our work weekends, skill-share, and keep us company over stews & potato cakes. We've been stripping wallpaper, repointing, tiling, plastering, and swotting up on straw bale insulation at an exciting straw bale build in Saxmundham. In other news, we had to rip out our old cooker - which luckily didn't kill us - and put in a big new one with a hefty 8 hobs, which was kindly donated to the house by our brilliant friend, Alex. So, happily, it turns out we now have a super oven to make amazing communal meals with! There is a bit of debate about the energy consumption of the fan, which looks like some kind of spaceship.



Our garden suddenly sprang into life and we've been growing herbs, tomatoes, strawberries, kale, and some other, less useful, but rather pretty things in it...


Frankie's surplus of willow meant we learnt a bit about keeping it alive and making useful things, like a fence, a veg bed, a bike shelter, and... er... decorative tetrapack fence panels...

willow and tetrapack fence panels 
bed of peas!

We had a couple of parties too...


In June we threw a party to raise awareness about the declining bee population, and when people went away they took the wildflower seeds we gave them, which some of them planted... We know this because someone actually sent us a picture - check out the happy bee!


So to celebrate summer & crack on with preparing for winter we had a garden party featuring all the usual party stuff, and a spectacular 7-hour DJ set from the Decibel Kid, followed by some slightly shaky DIY the next day. We had eco-friendly compost bin-building, stripping flaky paint off the windows and sanding them down, and a bit of work on the basement, which we are turning into a band practice space! Watch this blog for more updates on that... We used pallets, willow, and poly-carbon to make the compost bins. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of them up soon.




The House of Random Camel once again desires a new member!

Due to one of us moving on to pastures new there is a space opening up for someone new in September. Everyone interested in living as part of an urban communal house committed to ecological sustainability, activism, and working towards social change, please get in touch with us about it! If you want to know more, have a look at our previous post from February. Everything except the description of the room is the same - see below. Also, we have given in to twitter and occasionally post things to keep the internet gods happy.

Rent for this room is £55 per week [still within the local housing benefit rate] and there is still no council tax to pay. The room is 12ft x 15ft, with a metal double bed included. It is on the first floor, and it has two windows overlooking the street, facing north west.