Significant Progress

Bathroom external wall rendered

Rain chain and more finished walls

Having a renderer that has been able to give some full time attention to the house has led to significant progress being made over the last few weeks. The internal walls are finished and there are only three external walls, three upper walls and a small section around the front door to go.

Freshly rendered back wall

Front of house freshly rendered

The hemp lime rendering  has not been easy. The window headers have been particularly difficult as the render is not very sticky and so tends to fall off the window headers, the render also does not spread very well and so cannot be moved around on the wall, it also tends to get rougher if you go back and try to touch it up.  But Brett, the renderer, persevered and has managed to do the window headers by filling any gaps or holes first (particularly any patches where chunks of the hemp wall have broken away or crumbled), then when this is dry he has attached a straight edge to the window and finished the underside of the window header, then when this has gone off a bit he has gone back and done around the face of the window header. The window headers have been done the day before the wall has been rendered. Then when the wall is done the sides of the windows or doors have been done first followed by the face of the wall. 

Patching the worst of the holes in the window header

Window header rendered

 The walls were wetted down before being rendered, then sprayed with a light mist of water on the evening after the wall was done on warmer days or the next day, to slow the drying down.

The hemp render was not suitable for use on the Magnesium Oxide (MgO) board at all. It had to be done in two coats, increasing the cost. The MgO wall could not be wet down first otherwise the render just slid off. Even then the render had great trouble sticking to the wall and if done too thickly would bubble and fall off or crack and just slide. The last MgO walls were done by splattering the first coat on which seemed to work better, but it was a bit late in the project to worth this out.  The second coat of render on the MgO was very difficult to work and on most walls the finish was very patchy both in texture and colour.

Left - Hemp render on MgO Board and right- hemp wall

Hemp render on MgO Board

With only a few walls left to do the render will be finished in a few weeks after Brett takes a break from the hemp walls, with a few more conventional jobs. The completion of the internal walls and the external walls, that have lights on them (thank you Brett for doing those walls at short notice), meant that the electrics in the house could be finished. Paul and Luke from Solar Connections came down and fitted all the internal and external wall lights and got all the power points working. A small problem arose when the back circuit and stove circuit would not work. I panicked that there may be a problem with the wiring in the wall or roof and I would have to start pulling the ceiling down to find it. Thankfully this was not required, but a mix up of the stove and dishwasher power points will hopefully be resolved by long cords on these appliances or a short extension cord hidden under the cupboards.

External light installed

Front of house with external lights installed

 I had forgotten about the LED lights under the overhead kitchen cupboards and so spent much of the day putting up the cupboards so the electricians could install the lights. The LED lights were made up to fit the length of the cupboards, leaving a gap for the range hood over the stove.  

Kitchen cupboards and LED lights underneath

Everything happened at once as on the same day the electrics went in, Brett was rendering the external walls and Greg from Alpine Glass put the semi frame less shower screen in the front bathroom. Plus he helped me out by drilling the holes in the tiles for my toilet roll holder, I had been scared to do these for fear of cracking the tiles. With the right drill bit and experience it was no problem.

Semi frame less shower screen

Toilet roll holder

The completion of the internal rendering meant that the final finish on the floor could be done. Before this could be done I had to remove all the boards and plastic protecting the floor and remove the tape and clean the excess render from around the edges of the walls. I used vinegar and hard work to clean up the render from the edge of the floors and had to vacuum and mop the floor several times with multiple changes of water to get rid of all the fine dust. 

Floor in need of more mopping

Cleaned concrete floor

 The first coat of finish on the polished concrete had what looked like crazy paving type pattern cracked in the top of it. This was only visible when light hit the floor at an angle but was much more obvious under artificial light. There were also a few patches of white spots and some rough sections where things had fallen on the floor when the first coat was drying as this was done before the windows had been put in.  

Crazy paving cracks in sealer

White dots on concrete

Henry and Adrian from Dayman Group returned to fix up the floor. It had been two years since they did the first cut on the polished concrete and almost a year since the first sealer went on. The floor was given a light sand which will hopefully resolve the crazy paving cracking and remove the rough sections. A bit more of a sand was required to get out the white spots, which I was told were caused by the floor being covered before the first lot of sealer had fully dried. They also fixed up some patches which would have been covered by the kitchen cupboards, except that the cupboards we are installing are about 30cm off the ground. 

I left while the final coat of floor sealer was still wet and so am keen to get back down there and see what the final finish is like.

Rendering Resumes

In October last year we began to have some problems with the render. The render went on ok and looked fine when wet but dried very blotchy and with lots of cracks.

Freshly done render

More fresh render

Blotchy render

Lots of cracks

 At first we thought that the problem was that the render had been getting wetter and wetter as he weather got warmer and it had reached a point where it was too wet, However in retrospect this seems to be a wrong assumption. We are not sure what caused the problems with the render, it may have dried too fast or the weather been too warm. As other walls were done after the blotchy ones and they looked fine.

Subsequent walls looked fine

We tried to have a second coat put over the three blotchy walls but this did not go well and when it became clear that the second coat would not go on smoothly we had no choice but to chip off the whole wall of render and start again. This was done for three walls the two largest in the main room and one in the back bedroom.  Two of the walls were really soft even though it was about two months since they had been done and the render came off really easily. the other wall on the north side of the main room had some soft patches and some really hard patches.

Render chipped off bedroom wall

 The first wall we chipped off looked fine when first done, then started to dry blotchy again, but in a different way the second time.  Ironically another wall done on the same day and with the same mix turned out fine. When the second wall we had chipped the render off was redone it too looked fine to begin with but when it looked like it was starting to dry unevenly I wet it down several times and it ultimately dried with an acceptably even finish. We were not keen to redo the blotchy wall we had already chipped off once and tried to get some lime paint to match, but our test patch showed that the colour was not a close match and even two coats of the paint did not cover the dark and light patches underneath.

The first wall that was chipped off looked fine when first re rendered

Wall done the second time when drier

And drier again

Wall done on the same day and same mix turned out fine

Redone wall that was wet down after rendering

Test patch of lime paint

John, who had been doing our rendering, had a new baby and a full time job and no longer had the time to work with such a frustrating and inconsistent product. We looked for someone else to render the outside of the house. When Brett Smith from Shoalhaven Cement Rendering came out to give us a quote, he did not know how the product would go on so he picked up a trowel and did a small wall. The wall was wet down a few hours after it was done to slow the drying. The wall looked great and he go the job, which was later extended from just doing the outside of the house to finishing the inside as well.

Brett's test wall

It was pleasing to see work on the house resume. Worried that the earlier mixes were too wet Brett started with a slightly stiffer mix, however it proved hard to get a smooth finish and we went back to the wetter mix that John had used.

Halfway through the first wall

First external wall complete

One more picture because it looks so good

Work then progressed on a difficult wall that had been half done previously and had only half the window reveal done. Brett did an admirable job joining the new and old render and rendering the reveal on a very crumbly section of hemp walling around the window where a large chuck of hemp had fallen out.

Wall with join and freshly done window reveal

The window headers and reveals then threw up a new set of problems to be resolved. The render was not very sticky and did not like sticking to the window headers. On the next wall the decision was made to use a thin coat of a wetter mix on the window headers and to do the window reveals first before the rest of the wall. This way the window reveal could be done and the render stick then as the render stiffened any minor fixing up could be done. One thing about the hemp render it does not respond well to being fixed up or touched up once done as this tends to roughen the surface. It is much better to put the render on and leave it alone.

 

In the second week into the rendering 120mm of rain overnight at Culburra delayed further progress.  But when work resumed on the external walls Brett's decision to go around the corners when the first wall adjoining the corner was done proved to be a good one and the second wall adjoining the corner could be feathered in leaving a soft gently rounded corner.

 

Heavy rain cause the creation of a temporary lake

Nice softly rounded corner

Almost looks like the house is done

Most of the walls left to do on the inside were the first and second coats on the Magnesium Oxide board. The hemp lime render and the Magnesium Oxide board were not a good mix. The render needed to be done in two coats and even then the first coat had to be done with a slightly stiffer mix and barely stuck to the wall. It was very difficult for Brett to get a smooth finish of the MgO Board and one of the walls has started drying very patchy. We will have to wait a few weeks and see if this evens out as it dries or remains, in which case we may have to paint it as a 'feature' wall. In the entryway with a thin slightly wetter mix for the second coat the render went on a bit better.

Second coat of render on MgO Board

Entryway render going on second coat of MgO Board

Render still wet on MgO board

The Great Wave Mosaic

I am a fan of Japanese woodblock prints, particularly landscapes, I also love the medium of mosaic so when I was free to tile a whole bathroom however I wanted, I chose to tile my shower in the famous watery themed print “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai, more popularly known as "The Great Wave."

An original print of Under the Waver off Kanagawa

I bought tiles to break up into mosaic pieces as this was the only way that I could get the specific colours I wanted and have all the tiles the same thickness, which made them much easier to work with. With a colour photocopy of ‘the wave’ in hand I used the old fashioned grid method to transform it into a 1800 x 2100mm drawing, with a few minor changes to make it fit to the size of my shower. I then mosaiced each of the two 900mm shower walls separately. I cut, smashed and nibbled the tiles to the right shape and laid them out over the picture in sections the width of a piece of contact, then rolled the contact over the top to hold the pieces in place.

The first panel I laid out on the floor, which was good as I could see the whole picture at once but working on the floor was not good for my back. When complete I cut the mosaic along the grout lines into panels of about 300 x 300mm. The second panel was done on a large bench 1.5m wide but not long enough to hold the whole panel, so I started working at the top and pushed the panel up the bench as I went when the tiles got to the edge of the bench I cut them off into the 300 x300mm panels. The panels were packed into a box in the order that I would put them on the wall, which meant that the panel I finished last was the first to go up. 

Final section made up on the bench, with contact on top

Mosaic being cut up into sections

Sheets of mosaic packed into a box for transport

I was worried that I would have trouble putting the approximately 300 x 300mm sheets on the wall, but this was unfounded and the mosaic went up surprisingly easily. I spread tile adhesive on the wall, in wide bands sufficient to take a row of mosaic sheets, then, careful to line up the first piece straight, I pressed the sheets onto the wall. To try and push them on flat and not have an undulating mosaic surface I pressed them on gently by hand and moved them into the right place then pressed them down with my rendering hawk, which is a flat square of metal about 300 x 300mm with a handle on the bottom. Then when the whole row was done I went over it with my level, which covered the whole row of the mosaic, and pushed down to make sure it kept straight across the row. I later did this vertically too. 

Three quarters of the mosaic on the wall, hawk and level at bottom

The following day I peeled the contact off the front of the mosaic, a few pieced had not adhered properly and I had to go back and put them back in, but this was not bad considering the number of pieces in the mosaic. Unfortunately several of the pieces that had to be put back in did not sit flush and are a bit uneven, but this is hardly noticeable over the whole piece.

Mosaic adhered to the wall

I was very happy with the finished look and how it almost seamlessly bends the corner however, when I grouted the mosaic with white grout the white sections blended together and the grout lines in the dark section became more prominent. I am not sure if I like the look of the mosaic with the white grout and am worried the white of the wave does not stand out enough against the alabaster background. However, I will wait until I finish the rest of the bathroom before I decide to make any changes.

The whole mosaic project took me well over 100 hours, I think, and it could be as much as 150 hours. It is hard to tell as I did the mosaic over 9 months. The first section with large amounts of the same colour was put together quite quickly, once I realised how long the detailed sections would take I was too far into the project to stop and so I persevered and I am proud of my achievement.

The finished mosaic

 

Deck Joists and garden mulch

Notwithstanding that the inside of the house was still a workzone, later in January, my friend Martin joined us for a weekend, camping in a tent out the back. Work continued apace on the decking, disguising the lack of work being carried out on the rendering.The concrete forms around each of the foundations were removed. They had been made with scrap timber held together with two nails from the farming nailer in diagonally opposit corners ad two screws resued from the formwork in the other two. This meant that they wer easy to take apart with the impact driver.

With the bearers all secured in place it was just a matter of cutting to length, squaring and attaching the 90 x 45 treted pine joists. But prior to this we removed any vegetation left under the deck area and covered it in a layer of blue metal. This was done to proide good drainage under the deck and try to prevent grass growing there. the joists were then attached with two galvinised skew nails from the fraiming nailer where each joist crossed a bearer. I enjoyed the speed with which the joists went on.

L shaped side deck

Front of house with decks

Main front deck

More thought was required for the curved deck and my friend, Martin, helped me work out where extra bearers and joists and blocking between the ends of the joists was needed to support the curved edge of the deck.

The curved deck

Prior to Christmas I had ordered a truckload of mulch from a tree lopping company. It arrived unexpectedly in mid January. The pile was so big that before we spread it out we had to climb over it to get from the back gate to the house. We spread out wet newspaper, leftovers collected from the local newsagent, to surpress the weeds and mulched the back section of the garden. It was amazing the transformation it made, take it from building site to a home. Two passionfriut plants were also oplanted along the back fence. A while fig tree, gifted by a friend, was added to the garden. While we were not on site our neighbours Leslie and Don, who are avid gardners, have lovingly watered and fertilised our passionfruit and figs and hev even protected them from the digging paws of the bandicoots.

The mulch pile

Newly mulched garden