Lath and Plaster

Wednesday 3 April 2013

We're a bit frustrated now, we want to get cracking on something.  We've asked Constantine to research straw bales, and he seems to think he can get build-quality bales here in Greece, so that looks promising.  We've also asked for prices for floorboards to do out the mezzanine, so we can move in as soon as the weather is a little warmer at night.  Then there's the bathroom to staircase floor, if that gets done we can install a loo, build the internal corridor walls and put in stairs - so we need some stone flags.  Anyway, all these possible projects are in limbo, and we don't quite know what to do with ourselves. 

So today, Dave decided to try lath and plaster.  We have a lot of left-over wood from the roofing boards, as well as various offcuts from everything else, and all the temporary bracing struts.  This amount of wood is taking up floor space and being a nuisance when we're painting the wood frame.  So any productive use of the wood is excellent, as it helps to clear the space.

So we agreed that Dave would have a go at the first internal wall inside the front door - this is destined to be the back of the battery store cupboard, so he's free to make a mess if he wants.  He cut the roofing boards along their length to make laths approx 3cm wide, and nailed them with 1 cm gaps to batons inside the first trial aperture in the wall.  We picked a rectangle for the first go:

Over the laths is layered a piece of plasterer's netting.  Once upon a time this would've been hessian or burlap, but nowadays it is fibreglass.

 The reverse side faces the bathroom, and will need a waterproof covering, so it can't be earth plaster.  So we used a bit of polyester insulation left over from building the shed, as the entryway won't be heated but hopefully the bathroom will, and held it in place with a few boards.  Eventually we will decide what to face the wall with on that side.

Here's Dave, surrounded by his earth plastering equipment.  The earth is a seam of good clay that appeared about 2 feet down on the land while Dave was digging out the drainage ditch.  We set the good stuff aside on the blue tarp, and Dave has had it soaking in the flat bucket for a day or two.

 So now he has this interesting clay slip

 which can be ladled onto a wire mesh screen to be sieved into a fine paste, which is mixed with some 1" lengths of dry grass, cut from our field, and bags of sand left over from the roof mortar,

 and then slapped onto the trial frame, using hands, and a small trowel for the corner-y bits

Dave says it's a bit rough on the hands - it is full of sharp builder's sand, after all - but otherwise quite pleasant to work.  This is a first 'scratch' coat.  There'll be two more, increasingly fine coats after this.