now all our internal walls are up, and as of this week, finished to near perfection, it is time for some colour. disappointingly perhaps, on most surfaces this colour will be white, which contains, physically, all colours, but could be seen as a bit of a cop out when it comes to design choice. fair enough.
most internal surfaces are actually plaster board, and will be coated using standard paints, but as we said before, the rendered hempcrete walls have to be treated differently, to ensure they remain breathable. we will be using lime wash, an ancient way of painting walls, and to make things a bit more interesting, we’ll actually choose a few different colours to go in different rooms. exciting, i know.
but first we had to try how well the lime wash would cover the grey-brownish sand & lime render, given the recommendation is to apply two coats of lime wash on top of a base. and since the experts could not help us figure out whether the base coat was actually breathable (we suspect it isn’t, the safety sheets sounds a bit too chemical), we tried painting directly onto the render. the photos above show the first coat (left), and then then second (top two thirds on the right). we think it will work, and we actually like how the paint isn’t completely even (that’s a feature of lime wash), we think it brings the walls to life and is very much in character with what we want our home to be.