Winds light to variable

Well, not exactly.  A few days after my last post, there was a violent wind storm, including one or more small tornados in our area.  Nobody is really sure how many, and we're trying to figure it out from the patterns of damage.

One twister dropped in about 10m from the house and ripped apart four trees on three sides of it.  We were incredibly lucky that only one fell on the roof, and even then the damage was quite minor.  It only smashed a few metres of the verandah roof.

One of those trees was twisted in two and fell towards the mud shed, missing it by inches.  In fact, the verandah guttering was bent as the uppermost twigs and leaves brushed past on their way to the ground.  TJ just bent it back up again.

This all happened during the week when we weren't here.  I'm slightly ashamed to say that when a neighbour rang to say there was a bit of storm damage on the road in front of our place, my first thought was  "I hope it didn't pull the wet render off the east wall".  My second thought was "I'm really glad I didn't say that out loud".

We spent a weekend sawing up some of the trees close to the house.  The following weekend we caught up on some gardening and walked the property, trying to figure out if it a single twister looped back on itself and zig-zagged along, or if there was more than one.  Everything seems unsettled and wrong while there are still fallen trees near the house, but we should finish cutting them up tomorrow.

We are just incredibly lucky.  Looking at the intense but contained patches of broken trees, it was clear that this thing came of the sky like the hand of god, irresistibly powerful, breaking everything for a few seconds or minutes each time before it withdrew.  I'm certain that if it had come through the house instead of next to it, I would be typing this somewhere else.  If it had touched the water tank on its tall stand instead of passing a metre or two from it, or if it had pushed over entire trees instead of breaking them up in mid air, or any other of a series of minor differences, I would be typing this somewhere else.  Our insurance was due the day before it hit and we had paid it.  Like I said, lucky.

An hour of render, times eight

6.15am Sunday

 This was my Sunday, hour by hour, rendering the east wall.

7am - the sun rises

8am - struggling with render quality - three distinct batches on one panel but the last one is good

9am - on a good batch of render and sailing along - stopped for brekkie until 10am

11am

12 noon.  This panel looks more finished than it is - the mud is just slapped on.

1pm.  Tiring now. This looks the same, but I've squished the mud into the wall more thoroughly, smoothed it and cleaned around the rocks and the woodwork.  I've trimmed the straw on the final panel and started slapping mud onto the section over the window.

2pm.  Nearly there!  A frustrating, hungry hour in which the render would not stick to the wall.  Mix after mix slumped off.  Then lovely gentle warm rain started falling and I persevered, but I'm not sure the mix ever really did stick to the wall. Maybe it will still be there next week, maybe not.

2.40pm.  Finished and cleaned up.

Lovely Sunday.

Aye sir, render

Fresh render, East Wall

Well, I couldn't put it off forever, so yesterday I finally got it together to apply a fine new garment of render to the west wall.

This marks an important turning point in the mud shed building, because the framing (TJ's job) is nearly complete and the mud work (my job) becomes the main task.  In case you haven't noticed, I've been procrastinating like crazy.  It's hard work, but now I've started, I feel better about it and I'm looking forward to doing more rendering next weekend.

The big difference is, I finally got the phone number of that guy who runs a dairy down the road, rang him up and arranged to come and collect some fresh cow poo from the milking shed for the render mix.

Cow poo is the magic ingredient in a good mud render.  It binds the other ingredients, adds fibre (finely chopped grass), makes the mix easier to handle and when the mix dries, it is harder and more weather resistant.  And here's a great steaming bucket of it for your enjoyment.

Not as stinky as you might think

This is the first coat ("parging coat") of render.  Its task is to stick to the walls, fill all the bumps and make a smooth, flat surface.  So it contains a lot of chopped straw (I just use chaff, because it's cheap and pre-chopped).

The mud I used this weekend didn't have enough clay in it, so it didn't want to stick to the wall.  It was really hard going.  It didn't want to stick, and I had to keep scraping it up and re-applying it, pushing it into the surface.  I wanted to throw the whole mix out, but where would I throw it?  The easiest way to dispose of it was on the walls.

So once I finished the patch I set out to do, to the left of the door, I just kept rendering.

Before (the green stuff is masking tape)

After!

Funnily enough, after spending a day covering the walls, I didn't feel like I had added something to the shed so much as uncovered something.  With the excess straw trimmed and clothed, you can see the structure better.  The rocks, the frame, the curved door surrounds.

With and without render

I also got around to finishing that patch of the south wall that was left bare all winter after I ran out of render that day back in April.

South wall patch

I'll be interested to see how different the two mixes are once they are dry.  The mix from April was full of clay (it's the colour of terra cotta!), so it stuck to the wall like anything but it has cracked a lot.  Cracks in the first coat are OK, so long as the render doesn't peel off.

Today's mix was brown and full of silt, which feels superficially like clay (that's how I made the mistake), so it was difficult to apply.  But once it was on the wall it was easy to manipulate.  I was able to shape it and make it flat.  I'll be interested to see what it's like when it dries.

1st coat ("parging coat") render - fluffed up with straw