When Mike Harris and Jo Lewis decided to renovate a traditional three-room cottage in County Leitrim, they knew it would be a challenge, especially considering that Mike had no prior experience and intended to do all the work himself, including building straw bale walls. What they didn’t expect was that it would take them six and a half years!
“We were really naive when we moved here,” says Mike, who sold his vegetarian restaurant business in London before moving to the Leitrim countryside with Jo and their two young children. “We lived in a mobile home during the entire build and towards the end we got extremely tired of it! But memories fade, the kids barely remember what it was like. We arrived with a toddler and a baby, and a third child was born while we were living there. The eldest is now 12 and the youngest eight and a half.” Having lived in the house for three and a half years, even Mike can hardly remember how hard it was. “Now we’re in a nice house and that makes up for everything.”


“It was surprisingly cheap to put the frame up; the timber, straw and roof all came in at less than €30,000.” And it’s not due to scrimping on materials, but rather savings on the labour costs.“I just got the wood and started putting it up, based on the architect’s plans, which were checked by an engineer. It was not that complicated, the main thing was to make sure the measurements were correct. I used a laser level.”



“The straw came in really dry, and we stored it upstairs until we did the walls,” he adds. “When the bales were actually inserted into the timber frame walls, I put up a plastic sheeting to protect them. There’s an overhang on the eaves, of about one metre where the prevailing winds drive the rain. The water that did get in dried up quickly.”




Another example of products that have significantly come down in price since Mike and Jo built their home are windows. “Triple glazing nowadays is affordable – that’s something we really wanted but we would have had to wait for another six years for prices to come down!”In fact, finding the right suppliers for the curtain wall in the living room was one of the biggest challenges. “Window suppliers wanted to put in a dividing bar between the panes, which we didn’t want, and they would’ve charged us four times more than what we ended up paying. So we went ahead and built it ourselves by getting double glazed units sealed with weather strips. It’s a commercial system that ended up costing us €5,000.” The rest of the windows in the house cost €17,000. Of course, there were some bits of the project that were done by others, including the plumbing and electricity. “The electrician is a friend of mine so I helped him do the work, but the plumber worked on his own. The plastering on the stud walls and ceilings was also done by a local guy, and the wood flooring was professionally installed. It was the same price to buy the wood and get it installed as buying the wood only. As for the linseed floor covering, we didn’t have much choice as it requires specialist installation. That actually turned out to be one of the most expensive parts of the build, costing €6,000, but we love it. It’s beautiful!” Living the dream? Sustainability is about making as little an impact as possible, and in the case of houses, that includes how they’re heated. As a result Jo and Mike were intent on sourcing their fuel from their property. “When we got here we planted six acres of coppice,” says Mike. “In eight more years we’ll be self-sufficient. For now, we buy the wood to fuel our log burner, which we put in a boiler house. It’s manually fed, so we have to light and stoke it. There’s a 1,500 litre buffer tank and a separate hot water tank.”

