Studio build

Week 24 - 30 Nov 2014

With the weather not nice enough for sustained outdoor work, I've been trying to get the studio put back together.  Dave has been focused on getting in wood stores, ready for the winter, and making me plaster mixes on demand, so I've pottered along, finishing off the details, plastering the internal wall and making worktops and the sink surround.

 This is the curved wall, after plastering, I'm quite pleased with it.  The skirting board still needs to be sanded and painted, but the plaster looks good.  This is the prototype for the eventual bathroom wall, and seems to be okay.

 So that we can easily put guests up in the studio - which is after all, our spare bedroom - I've been constructing these fancy gatelegs for the main worktop, so it will fold away to fit a bed in under the window.  If only all the wood - mine and the house frame - was square and level and generally straight, it would be so much easier.

 In case you were worrying that we do nothing but work, here's a pic of Dave and I at a birthday party on Saturday night ...

 and Dave and Spiros getting into the swing of it.

 Back in the studio - the gatelegs extended and back baton fitted.  The 20mm ply tops are downstairs getting a coat of varnish

 The internal wall - plastered and ready for more shelves, possibly after a coat of limewash.  You can clearly see the new, still damp (pinky) plaster compared with the dryer (white) sections.  The big difficulty with the studio is that all my boxes of creative stuff need to be shuffled round from corner to corner depending on where I need clear space.

The sink corner, plywood structure ready to be cut out and one of the sinks from the camper van fitted - when Dave has a moment to disconnect it, and plasterboard for tiling to protect the bale wall from water splashes.

Mini Bale-Raising (kitchen door)

Sunday 23 Nov 2014

Pete and Nim came back for the micro bale raising, and we started the day by posing in the little alcoves created by the wood structures ready for the bales.

 Naomi and Pete ready for action - under a slight misapprehension about nice clean bales!

 Me and Dave, rather more scruffy, expecting mud and plaster

 Nim and Pete took on the bale splitting - the cleanest job, while Dave and I clay-slip painted and lugged muddy bales into the frame - cut to require a certain amount of 'persuading' into place.  

 Dave giving it some with the 'Persuader'

 Later that day - all bales in position - only six used - and two part bales left over even so.  Plastering in full swing, while Dave fits the door drip-lip.

Taa-daa!  East wall fully built and first coated, window frames in, all ready for the second coat (although the weather is changing again, so it won't be for a few days). Time to huddle in the nice warm music room and feed sausage and mash to the workforce.

Window Frames

Saturday 22 Nov 2014

Rowan is off to the UK for a couple of months tomorrow, and he had promised to make our window frames before leaving, so that we can get a good second coat of plaster up tight to the frames before we go away too.

 Just when we were wondering if Rowan would be able to make the frames in time, we got the call, and Dave went to pick up them up.

 We fished out the roll of waterproof, breathable membrane we had stored since last year, and found these nice little cob insect houses just inside it.  Probably wasp larvae.  Rowan flicked them into the undergrowth.

 The first windows go in - always a wonderful moment!

 This is the little arched window.  On the inside there is a diagonal strut that would have made this a very small square window, so I asked Rowan if he could construct an arch.  He loves a challenge.  It is in fact five tiny straight sections, but it looks arched to me.  I'm hoping to get some stained glass in this one, to catch the morning light.

All the windows in and membraned - lovely psychedelic colours!  Dave was building the ladder frames for the kitchen door, all ready for tomorrow's mini-bale-raising.

Curved walls

Friday 21 Nov 2014

A day of fixing walls.  First the installation of base frames for the bales outside the kitchen on the east wall.  Dave constructed little ladder frames, which I leveled and fixed, then packed out with stones, gravel and mortar to give a firm foundation. They make quite nice little seats, in the morning sunshine.

Then I moved indoors, and worked some more on the internal wall to the studio.  I had used the rainy days last week to do a lot of woodwork on this wall, especially where it meets the ceiling - we know now that any little gaps or holes will attract solo wasps and bees, and I'd rather they chose somewhere else.  So the rafter needed to be boarded in, and stuffed with insulation (old pillow inners) and clever ways of fixing laths from the wrong side devised , and little bits of wood cut to fit various gaps and shapes in the roof trusses.  In all, it was taking a long time.  I also wanted to see if I could make a wall that turned a right angle inside (for shelves) but showed a nice curve on the outside.  The pic below shows my solution - laths running vertically.  Will see how it looks once plastered.

For this little wall I tried to use up all the short offcuts lying around the place, they're all different widths and thicknesses but it's better to use them than keep them lying around.

Various jobs

Thursday 20 Nov 2014

Having been rained off for a few days, we found that the chimney was leaking around the hole in the roof.  Dave very concerned, in case any of that water was making its way into the bale wall, so as soon as possible, we were off to Lefkas for a roll of flashing to do the job properly ourselves.

 An over-the-top (hopefully) fix for the roof.  Impossible to get a neat flashing kit like you would in the UK.  Fingers crossed this will work.

 In the mood for general improvements, Dave then decided it was finally time to run the hot water down to the house, since we had found the length of pipe we didn't know we had.  Up till now we have only had hot water in the shed, where the shower still is, and the washing machine.  We will eventually relocate the 'water-hotter' nearer to the house, but that involves moving the solar panels onto the roof - it's one of those domino jobs that could take weeks and money we don't have, so we'll make do with a long pipe for now.  It just means that we'll waste hot water lying in the pipe.

 Meanwhile, I was back in the hole outside the kitchen - the wall was now at chest height while standing in the cellar space, so I thought it best to put the terrace back before topping off the wall and installing the base frames.  

 The terrace needed to be partly deconstructed to make it shorter, and then each plank cut to fit around the protrusions and indents of the stones.  This involved some imaginative work with the jigsaw and took rather longer than expected, but at least we can walk out through the kitchen door again.

More foundation wall

Saturday 15 Nov 2014

Our friends, Pete and Naomi, have missed both our bale raisings, due to being in the UK at the wrong time, and were keen to put in some time helping us build, so we arranged a day and they were willing to tackle plastering the studio, while Dave and I looked at building a foundation for the remaining bit of the east wall.

 Just getting the terrace decking up was a job in itself, and we were very pleased to find a roll of hot water pipe we'd forgotten all about.  We were also pleased to find that we had 38cm of concrete ring-beam to build a foundation on.  We need 35cm for the bales, so any less would have meant extending the foundation.  With 38cm as long as the wall goes straight up, it will be wide enough.

 Meanwhile, the studio looks like this on the internal wall side, only half built, 

 but I had managed to get the external wall laths in place and ready to go

 Pete and Nim at lunch after a hard morning's plastering

 Putting the first stones into the foundation wall.  I'm inside the cellar space, building, while Dave makes mortar for me, plaster for Pete and Nim, and brings stones, gravel and mortar to me.  Everytime Pete comes downstairs to refill his bucket, Dave has only just sat down. Pete thinks he's slacking!

 At the end of a very productive day: most of the studio wall plastered ...

and rather more wall built than I'd expected.  

After using all our best stones on the base level, we thought about the waste breeze blocks around where the Winnebago used to be - if we'd used those first we could have had the nice stones above terrace level.  Oh well, too late.  I used a few under where the threshold will be and several more broken up and used as filler in the back.

Track day

Wednesday 12 Nov 2014

Our poor track is showing its age.  Each deluge washes deeper ruts into the loose earth, and the overgrown prickly oak bushes on the side carve deep scratches into the Punto every time we try to squeeze past the worst of it.  So it was time for a day of track repair.  We had a half barrow of plaster that Dave trundled up to the rut, and then we went scrumping for two carloads of 'urbanite' - broken concrete dumped by the side of the roads which we used to fill the worst of the rut.

Then in a spirit of preparing for winter weather, I remembered that I'd made a log store a few years back and it was still in okay condition up by the big cedars, so I lugged it down to the house, placed it outside the music room back door and filled it with logs.

Getting Cosy

Monday 10 Nov 2014

We didn't do much over the weekend, time to huddle round the stove and have a rest.  But on Monday we got stuck into making our winter quarters a bit more homely.

 Having taken the sofa out of the bedroom we were able to shuffle the furniture around a bit and find rather more space.  I evicted all the dust balls and mopped the floor and it felt like a new room all of a sudden.  The square hole in the internal wall to the right of the bed gives onto the music room, and allows hot air from the stove to filter into the bedroom.  Dave's idea - clever, hey?

 But before we can settle into the music room we want to raise the floor level a bit.  But we also have to lower the floor level in the bathroom-to-be.  It makes sense to shovel the earth from the bathroom into the music room next door - so we did, about a ton of it.  Dave pickaxing and me shoveling and barrowing.

 By lunch we had a leveled out bathroom floor, and had half the music room raised by about 10cm.  Time to bring in the clean gravel: two tons of it shoveled by Dave and barrowed by me, up a plank from outside.  It was starting to get dark when we were raked smooth, with some flattened out cardboard boxes and a few rugs ..

and looking very cosy indeed (at least by our standards).

Chimney stack

Thursday 6 Nov 2014

George didn't come back after Tuesday, apparently the special flue we needed - double skin to protect against fire because of our wood frame - was taking some time to arrive.  Thursday dawned dark and moist and we had resigned ourselves to a huddled weekend, when George's pickup appeared ...

and in a race against impending storm clouds, George started fitting the flue

 Then Dave had a call from Pete, who had broken his wrist and needed taking to hospital, so he took off, leaving Paris and I with the plastering

 Oops, a hole in our roof - a bit scary!

 One of the more complicated batons-for-lathing constructs I've made: with two olive wood corners to manage and including a double electrical socket fitting.  I took the photo because it sort of reminded me of one of my Dad's paintings from the 60s

 Later that day - work all finished and Dave returned - time for the inaugural firing of the stove.  Hurrah!

My plinth has come

Tues & Weds 4 - 5 Nov 2014

Bad weather was forecast for Friday, and we didn't really expect to have the stove fitted before the weekend, but we pressed on with finishing the music room just in case.  Things started to look up when George, Spyros from Mamma Mia's brother, arrived to install firebricks on Dave's breezeblock base.

 Nice yellow firebricks: the eventual floor level will come up to the bottom of the yellow layer.

 Window furniture fitted - we haven't been able to find these casement openers anywhere locally so we have to order them from Screwfix - who deliver free in Europe for orders over £100

 Paris lathing and plastering the last open sections of the internal wall

 Dave and I hung tarpaulins to protect our new wall.  These are on long strings through ring-bolts, so they can be lowered and raised like hoisting sail.

 The last section of open bale - top centre - finally plastered over.  Music room damp but finished!

 Temporary bale sofa for admiring our work!

 With plaster still in the bucket and hours of daylight left, Paris and I moved upstairs and finished this bit of wall on the mezzanine landing (eventually to have bookcases and therefore known as 'the library',

and started on the top layer of the new wall in the studio