Peter and Natasha

Written by Peter, on 19-06-2010

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Internal rendering, a new window, flying trampolines and houses popping up like mushrooms. All this since the last blog. 

First of all, we decided to have a look at the forsaken room, otherwise known as the office. It's been the only part of the house that still has only one coat of render. It is also the tool room and a complete mess. So attacking it with render meant that it needed cleaning, tidying and organising. That was the mission and many lost things were found and are now hopefully refindable. So to the rendering.

For some reason the office is the most "interestingly shaped" room of the lot. The walls have very curious contours and one corner is an acute angle and so not easy to get a trowel into. Also it doesn't have the best first coat coverage. Our answer to all of these issues is cob. Yes, a nice mixture of render and straw has the fibrous strength to go on thick and fill a great many rough surfaces. Also, it filled in that tight angle a bit. So after a few hours the room was ready for a second coat. Several days later we started. What we have discovered with render is that in summer, render can dry in a few hours. In winter it's closer to a week. So instead of leaping in and finishing it off with a third coat, we've had to wait. Meanwhile we've had to move the tools back in!

Through in the studio our small east facing window has been blocked up by a piece of ply for a long time now. Finally I got to putting some glass in there! It is an amazing window because it's small enough to act like a frame for the view outside. It's a picture that is always changing. Small windows can be great.

We had some extreme weather during the week, heavy rain with simultaneous 100 kph winds. I have memories of trying to build in constant wind last year and I'm thankful to be warm and dry inside our house this time. At all stages of construction our house has been exposed to extreme weather and has stood up to it well. The same can't be said of our neighbours trampoline. Despite being well and truly pegged down and roped to another structure, the high winds broke its tethers and sent it our way. It was headed straight towards us, as evidenced by the trail of debris it left, but somehow it swerved and missed our house. It sailed on past and wound up halfway down the hill.

I collected all of the bits and pieces of it, over 50 of them and it was like a plane crash site with debris scatted over at least 150m. Thankfully our house wasn't the thing that slowed it down! We've made a decision along with the neighbours that trampolines won't work in this locality! Shame that, I quite like trampolines.

Houses along our road are starting to spring up like mushrooms. It's amazing seeing how fast a good number of experienced people can throw up a house! It's almost enough to make me jealous. I never used to look twice at houses going up, now that I've built one I am compulsively nosey. Natasha has to tell me to keep my eyes on the road as we drive past. But I've really only got eyes for one house on our street - the house built by us and our community of friends.

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Posted by Mellie, on 07-07-2010, 1. Great pun Sue!! (attention rendered - love it)   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... Posted by Sue Mills, on 21-06-2010, 2. Mushrooms and rendering Glad your office has had some attention rendered - it is always hard when you have a place that has been the repository for everything that's not in daily use and it has to be cleared out. Where did you put it all? Would love to see some photos of some of the houses going up on Possumtail Run.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment...