tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312177392011-04-21T18:30:52.153-07:00Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06054924744576638572noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31217739.post-1153083005068033942006-07-16T13:47:00.000-07:002006-07-16T14:52:44.966-07:00<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1476/6/1600/Les-foins-Oncle-Jules-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1476/6/400/Les-foins-Oncle-Jules-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Hi. My name is Paul Balcaen. I'm an Industrial Designer living in Toronto, Canada. My wife and I are planning on building our own home, and luckily we both agree that an affordable house we can build would be the best for us, as we both have some strong opinions on today's house styles and materials used. We feel houses shouldn't cost so much to make, and why are we building them this way. This blog will be a spring board of ideas, as I show the evolution of a design for our house. And straw bales will be an important material we will use. But the house won't be what you think. Stay tuned.<br /><br />Ever since I was a boy, I've wanted to build my own home. I guess my dad's influence on me runs rather deep. You see, I grew up on a dairy farm in Manitoba, and saw my dad design most of the buildinsg on the farm, including our Ranch Style house (it was the early 1970's. I still think the Ranch style is better than today's suburban house design, when we look at things like simple beauty, design layout and cost.) Using a few pages of graph paper, he made the basic layout of the buildings, and had an architect draft it on paper. That got me going at a very young age to design my own store and home. It was a "Carving Shop" where my friend and I would carve things out of wood (including a large full scale canoe hung from the rafters!) and sell them. My living quarters were rather sparse, a kitchen with wood stove, a bed on one side and a kitchen table on the other. Nevertheless, I enjoyed drawing technical things, house plans, space ships, robots, etc.. To me, it was a natural thought to design and build my own house one day. In the country, many people design and build their own homes, as did my ancestors, so I didn't think it was that weird or difficult. Of course, these my be my famous last words. <br /><br />The photo you see above is my uncle Jules Balcaen standing on a bale rack putting hay bales on a bale elevator, where my dad is stacking them inside the hay shed. The photo dates back to around 1974, taken by me with my Kodak Hawkeye flashfun camera (127 roll film!). it's one of the few photos I took of our farm near La Broquerie, Manitoba. And, yes I know, it's very dusty. I'll Photoshop it later.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31217739-115308300506803394?l=strawhouse.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06054924744576638572noreply@blogger.com0