Who doesn’t love a story about a new house build?! Building your own home is a dream for so many of us. Building your own home from scratch isn’t an option for most of us – maybe we don’t have the skillset, or the wherewithal, or the gumption!

Adam and Sian had much of the skillset up their sleeves, but they also knew they were in for a challenge. They chose to build using natural materials, sourced as much as possibly locally and reclaimed, and to do as much as possible of the work themselves. And also to take great joy from the process.

There were many challenges along the way, from the building of the house and from life itself. But they’ve created a house of such beauty, and in it you can feel all the love and sweat and joy this couple brought to building their dream home.

Here at Happen Films we have a passion for building using natural materials. Not just because the conventional building industry is one of the most wasteful of all – sending tonne after tonne of toxic materials to landfill every day, the world over – but because we love the resourcefulness and creativity that come with building this way; in this case using clay dug from the house site, making traditional timber framing with mortise and tenon joinery (no nails!), and the beautifully renewable resource that is strawbale as a building material.

We were stoked to have the opportunity to share Adam and Sian’s build journey so that others might be inspired by the possibilities for building in a way that is healthy for planet and people. And, of course, to follow the journey with this couple over four years of devotion to creating something truly outstanding.

In fact, we’ve filmed with Adam and Sian before. Back in 2016 – only our second year of filmmaking! – we visited them in their house truck on the Agari permaculture farm. Check out that film here to get know Adam and Sian a little. You’ll see they already were creating beauty and being thoughtful about how and where and in what they were living!