Gail & Randy

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  Description

  *️*️*️ We love hearing from prospective workaway hosts, but ask that you read below to see where we plan to be and when we have availability. Thanks!
  
  Randy and I retired several years ago, sold our acreage home, and have spent the past two years house and pet sitting while traveling in Europe, Central America and North America. We have taken this time to explore various cultures and countries, learn about other people and ourselves, and realize that we love a simple life style. (For your information, we are including a link to our house-sitting website: https://gailrandy.wordpress.com )
  Although we are still in the house-sitting/traveling mode, we have begun thinking about when we do decide to settle down again. In our future (grown-up?) lives, we have visions of building a home with natural materials (straw, cob, rammed earth), living mainly off-grid, having composting toilets and grey water systems, and being somewhat self-sufficient. We, alternatively, are playing with the idea of renovating an older home in some neat, eclectic neighbourhood. Our dilemma is that we don't know if these are pipe dreams or possible realities. We hope to use workaway as a means of being exposed to these skills and ideas, learning and sharing with others engaged in their own projects.

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  Type of help

  Gardening
  Building
  General Maintenance
  Cooking / shopping
  Help with Eco project
  Language practice

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  What skills do you have?

  We have extensive gardening experience, have raised chickens and turkeys, and have some experience with building. Randy has plastered, logged, poured concrete, laid asphalt, built rock walls, helped an electrician and worked with a furniture maker and refinisher. Gail has done some dry-walling and mudding (not her favourite job), done interior and exterior painting, wall-papering, and helped with laying flooring. In our recent Baja workaway, we both did rock facing on a tall gatepost; Randy created a stone walkway around the casita; we helped cutting and laying tile, as well as painting and cleanup work. During a recent workaway experience we built an outdoor kitchen - from planning to calculating materials to construction; we loved every minute of this project! Finally, we have had some experience with natural building; raising straw bales, using cob (including glass insets), laying earthen floors and working on the first plaster coat for a straw bale home.
  We both enjoy cooking, are very good cooks, and would be open to sharing some of this task; however, we would not want this to be our main job.
  Our building and renovating skills are growing, and we love to learn new ones. We are energetic, hard-working, optimistic and very willing to learn from and with others.

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  Languages spoken

  English, French, some Spanish

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  Age

  66 & 63

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  Nationality

  Canadian, Canadian and American (Randy)

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  What else ...

  We will be in SE Asia from late November and would enjoy hearing from people looking for help in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. We are especially interested in natural building, but would consider other types of work depending on location.
  Thank-you for getting in touch!

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  Some more information

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    Smoker

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    Driver's licence

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    Allergies
    No

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    Special dietary requirements
    No

Photos

My Photo Album

This is the deck extension we (mainly Randy) built in Duncan, BC.

One of our tasks in Golden, BC was cutting glass bottles to add to a cob wall in the earthship.

We learned to use cob to finish off the walls in the earthship.

Here, Randy is gluing together one of the drawers he made while working with the cabinet maker. (The facings are also his work.)

After a full day of working, we are both filthy but smiling.

While in Baja, Randy built this stone walkway/patio area around the casita; several tons of rock and gravel moved by hand, sand sifted and ground levelled to create a forty foot long area.

We both worked laying the tile in the casita; Randy also did much of the cutting and grouting while Gail had the chore of scouring the final product to remove residual grout.

Show all photos

The final 'layer' of the eight foot gate post facing.

Our signature project in Baja was doing the rock facing on this gatepost. We loved the creativity of this upside-down, inside-out jigsaw puzzle.

Randy learned to make rebates for this joist on the outdoor kitchen - a technique allowing for better support and a more beautiful design.

Gail became much more familiar and comfortable with the use of power saws during the outdoor kitchen project.

This is the end photo of the outdoor kitchen we made on Vancouver Island. The owners had a cement pad, three recycled windows and an idea; they gave us carte blanche and this is what we came up with. We loved every moment of the project.

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