Day 1 was spent getting sand, lime and cement mix from 'the city', finishing up the last little bit of weed whacking now that we bought some more twine for the weed whacker, setting up and watching our straw bale house building movie to make sure we knew what we were about to do.. It helped...a LOT!!
The next morning we started early, Papa got out his bale building book to make sure of his recipe for mixing the plaster and then he took a deep breath and started mixing!! The kids watching from a distance!! We had wanted to rent a mortar mixer but couldn't find one so we rented a cement mixer instead. We'll rent the cement mixer again.. though next time we are also going to buy another wheel barrow! The cement mixer came from town and we would have had to drive to the 'city' for the mortar mixer which means several hours of driving back and forth when the cement mixer did a very nice sized load, a wheel barrow almost full, which is about an hours work! The bagged stuff on the pallet is the cement mix and the lime, the big feed bags are two grades of sand, one fine and one a mix. The black garbage bag is chopped straw from the weed whacking.
The mix? 20 shovels of sand, 10 of lime, 2 of cement and a couple of large handfuls of chopped straw per shovel of lime!! Yup that's it!! Easy as can be!! Oh and some water to make it look like dino poop!! :)
Papa's got a load on a 'hawk' getting a feel for the texture of the plaster.. we started at the FAR end of the house so that we could learn out of sight of every person who ever comes on the place.. :) It went well though and even the back looks nice. We did get better and better through out the weekend and the next coat will not have the learning curve so it should go easier and faster! We did about 11 or 12 wheel barrow loads of plaster over 4 days. Each load took about an hour depending on how long we could both work on it. I was in and out with some loads as I had kids, meals and what have you to deal with but Papa only did two loads alone so I guess I was helpful :)
With plastering you have to do 3 coats, the scratch coat, the brown coat and the finish coat. Each has it's own fine points and the scratch coat is the roughest.. a good one to start with!! The scratch coat is also the only one with straw in the mix and the only one where you can do more then one layer to fix holes or what not. The scratch coat is also the ugliest!! You have to 'scratch' the semi wet walls to make a hold for the next layer to grab on to!
The very 1st load hits the straw!! The trick is to push it on hard so that it meshes with the straw and stays put.
R trying her hand at it!
E loves her new helmet and kept it on while we played with the plaster. Note they are standing on puddles.. you have to wet the straw down before you plaster. When the plaster dries it needs moisture to harden properly which the wet walls give it. Without that moisture the plaster would harden and fall off!!
Yes.. it felt VERY Strange to wet down the straw bale walls we have been protecting from water since last fall!! It truly was one of those.. OH MY WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE DOING moments!!
J loading up R's trowel. The girls and L do not have the arm strength to push the plaster into the straw.. it kept falling off and they didn't last long. J worked with us several times and enjoyed it a lot. If we were working he wanted to be but there were only so many spots he could reach.. he did do a goodly chunk of the front wall.
Dino poop!! LOL!!!
If L had the interest he probably could have done well too.. he just wasn't at all interested.
The wall with about 3/4 of a load of plaster on it. The other side by the door had the rest. Looking good!!
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