let me clarify this right away: when i say rough start i mean the circumstances could have been better. mostly, we could have done without that rain we were having. we started on tuesday, and then the friendly folks from the weather bureau forecast rain practically coming in vertically for wednesday.
it wasn’t quite as bad but by that time we had decided to play indoors and not build any walls. the issue is not the wall-building itself, but the mixing. playing with the various dangerous substances that importantly don’t like to be exposed to water isn’t easy when the weather is bad. the mixer creates clouds of mostly lime and cement that are best kept outdoors, so when it’s raining – at least for now – we need to be a bit circumspect.
we did put in a lot of work on thursday and friday and i think we have more than half of the garage walls built. these are the longest stretches of wall we have in the house, so that’s quite an achievement. building hemp walls isn’t difficult, but if it isn’t done well and consistently they look bad, and in extreme cases patches that have not been tamped properly could even fall out. we decided to start with the garage because it wouldn’t matter too much if these walls weren’t brilliant.
and – surprise – the roofers came back to fiddle a bit around the edges. literally. they installed the profiles covering the high and side edges fo the roof. they would also have done the gutters but unfortunately we were short two rain heads. that’s a thing, really. i’ll take photos once we have them installed.
and that’s where we are now. three (well two and a half) solid days of work. it’s looking pretty good so far, but there is a fair bit to go …