So while we wait, optimistically, for someone from an eco-plaster place to contact us*, I’ve moved back outside. Well, for the most part. Inside we’ve given the main bathroom a coat (or three) of waterproofing. It is, of course, hideous and probably environment destroying (although the safety data sheet basically says it’s not really terrible for anything, and is water soluble, but it stinks and our little organic vapour respirators don’t cope well with it). It’s meant to be two coats, but then you’re meant to go over and cover ‘pinholes’, and having seen the coverage I assumed it would essentially need three. Which it did.
Painting the bathroom involved opening the windows at the north and south end, and directing air into the bathroom in the hope it would stay bearable for the amount of time for the final coat. Each one’s seemed worse than the last. Part of this is that we’ve failed to keep our respirators in sealed boxes when not in use (although I only discovered that yesterday). Hopefully there won’t be too many pinholes to fix after this round.
Anyhow, before going in and subjecting myself to the fumes for the final coat (which went on this afternoon), I spent the day making a billion L-pieces. This is an extension to yesterday (and will be continuing for the forseeable) – where I spent some of the day routing the LED strip on the right hand side of the door. There’s the left side of the door still to route for the LED strip. Anyhow, back to the L-pieces.
Each of these is made using a little frame that I made up – and they’re glued and nailed together, then the short leg of the L is trimmed to length.
Then each one is positioned, glued and nailed in place – each one takes 5 nails that have to be carefully pre-drilled and then hand driven in. I didn’t bother predrilling on the long, straight ones. But we’re so short of the cedar, and these are so finicky, that I’m predrilling each one… Of which there are 48 per side. Plus one extra one that’s long and runs across the bottom.
I continue to be pleased about the way it’s coming together. The cedar strips do give me great pleasure when I’m looking at the house – that ‘job well done’ feeling. There are many small imperfections, but it does feel like it has been worth the effort. At least, so far. We’ll see when it’s done.
We also, after much effort, finally got another quote for a fence. This labour of calling has been tedious in the extreme, and I had to chase the people today (because they’d forgotten they were meant to be coming). Well, they came and measured. We’ll wait and see if we get an actual quote.
We also ordered our garage a couple of days ago. After endless battles, we ended up going with ‘Tuff Shed’. The quality’s nothing to write home about, but it’ll do the job and the price is reasonable.
Hopefully we’ll get the designs soon enough, because that’d be handy for painting the battens, and getting the myriad of crap out of the house.
* Which we can’t wait much longer for. I’ve dug out the eco-building-trainer person’s number, and may give him a call tomorrow and ask him if he can give me the numbers for the people so I can find out if it’s worth waiting.