Our first render day – January 2013
What a full-on day! Started with Mark Beedle’s arrival at 7.30am (although his day started at somewhere round 4am to get here by then!) and just swept on through the day from there. Exhausting work for our volunteers but having a full coat of lovely wet ‘mud’ all over the straw bale walls is a massive relief after all the recent days of fire risk.
The three days leading up to render day were a bit manic; getting the walls ready, pinning straps, finishing filling in the top boxing, wire meshing window bucks, etc, etc. Richard was still whipper-snipping at 8.45pm on the Saturday and we were only a few steps ahead of the spray machine on the Sunday; Richard whipper-snipped the inside walls and I was hanging tarps and plastic while Mark and the volunteers started rendering the outside!
Here are a few photos of the big event…
The days (and night) before…
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- Project cards on the wall.
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- An unwelcome visitor.
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Resting with a beer (oh, and
of course, the cat!)
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Sanding the
‘truth window’.
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Shaping an external
corner.
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Ta da! My first window
frame!
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Whipper snipping
– in the dark!?
Then the big day begins…
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- Sun rises – a perfect render day…
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- cool and cloudy!
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- Render mixing underway.
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- The spraying begins…
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- “Like patting a dog – backwards!?
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- Yes, hello, can I help you?
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- Is this the fun part?
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- It’s actually quite hard work…
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- but I’ve got the hang of it now!
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- And finally, all done!
But wait, that’s only the first coat…!?
Oh, and that’s only the shedudio… We still have the whole house to go? Aaaaaah!