March 2014

Kitchen floor

Finished the mud and lime floor in the kitchen and oiled it. It has fine cracks and marks where I smoothed areas which add an antique quality to it. Just needs one more oiling and it's done - yahoo!

Walls in round room

Then we started the can infill on the tyre walls in the round room. It's a long job as Dave sifts the soil first as there is so much rock in it. Then he mixes it with water in the wheelbarrow and finally we shape it into balls and pack it in with the cans. It's a job best done in a pair, especially when you're on top of a ladder.

1st stage infill

2nd stage infill

3rd stage infill

2nd and 3rd stage infill on round tyre wall plus mud shaping on dug out wall. I'm still adding chunks of quartz rock as detail in these walls, they did after all come out of the dug out soil and are beautiful when cleaned.

Front face shaping

Dave finished the lath and plastic layer on the front face. This is to strengthen the join between the different materials.

I shaped the end part of the wall - always keeping in mind that these areas will probably be cat sitting positions!

Lime-washing the dug out walls to stabilise them. I've also added a spray of upva glue diluted 50/50 with water to the areas I'd like to keep as the natural rock. This stops it being dusty but lets the beautiful stratas of the rock remain. The lime-washing is still in progress, I'm not sure how it will end up exactly, which bits will be left exposed, so I'm taking it slowly to see how it develops.

Champing at the bit

We're champing at the bit to start living here and couldn't help bringing some of our plants over so at least they could start making it home.

The pots with the very sad looking leaves have amaryllis bulbs in them. They should start to cheer up soon with any luck.

We re-potted the avocado using some of our home grown compost, also gave it a bit of a prune as I'd like to encourage it to grow upwards a bit more before it starts bushing out.

The last pic shows a plant that has seeded itself in the round room wall and is determined to stay - who are we to stop it so I've been working around it! The wood bits sticking out of the wall near it are roots from an almond tree outside. I'd like to keep them and make them into living hooks, but we'll have to see how it goes.

Floor leveling

Lastly Dave has been checking the levels of the round room floor. It's not far off as you can see from the little mountains of soil dotted everywhere.

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