Clay

I just had a shower and it was getting on towards time, really. I smelled like a hobo.

Just back from a fairly productive four days at the cabin, cracking on with claying out the inside of the building. Weather fairly decent for most of it, as seen below.

Here I am early in the process, just figuring out how to spread the stuff over, and work it into, the straw walls, before I became so covered in it that I could have been confused with a mud wrestler.

It’s just a fairly thin clay mixture with some sand in, I think, which has to be spread over the interior walls as a key for the thicker coat of plaster that is to come. Not plaster-plaster, it’s clay as well, but a different mix. Much of the back wall ended up being pretty flat, after packing out some bits with straw-and-clay wodges, but there are bits that we will be referring to as the Gaudiesque walls. Turns out it’s pretty hard to get straight lines with the re-used bales with clay already on them.

By the end of the weekend we’d pretty much done the slip coat and the packing out, plus attached hessian strips to the top edge and clayed them down, as visible here. Bob finally made it out to the place, and was extremely helpful as well as extremely amusing. He and Alec had a fabulous conversation regarding the use of the word “metal” as an adjective, coming to the conclusion that it was similar to “cool” but less broad, and that the important thing was that anything it was said of should also be “awesome.” It was agreed that Alec would be best advised to eschew any usage.

No particular reason for this photo, besides that the sunlight streaming in the window makes me happy and I can’t wait til it’s streaming in over my little home.

We didn’t quite work til after dark this time, which was nice, but it was drawing in a bit when I hung the last joist hanger, in preparation for framing the porch floor next time we’re there. That’ll quickly be followed by the porch roof, which will happen at the same time as the rest of the roof, which I really hope will be soon. The weather forecast is for storms, wind and some low-single-digit temperatures, so I’m keen to get to the point of putting in the wood stove as soon as possible.

Got to clean the house tomorrow in preparation for a viewing. Fingers eternally crossed!