Rendered Speechless

Monday 23 May 2016

Having finished all but three square metres of wall in the teeth of a threatened thunderstorm on Friday, we were all ready for the final push on Monday (after all-day rain on Saturday and a day at work on Sunday).

We'd covered up Friday's work with sailcloth, which, luckily we'd left half-rigged and easily hauled up, so that the plaster (which apparently I should be calling 'render' when it's outside) wouldn't wash off.  So, Monday morning we dropped the tarp, Dave made the final two mixes, and I slapped it on.

 Lowering the rain cover

 The pale patch around the small upper window is the bit to finish, as well as a strip along the bottom

 Working from the top down ...

 ... to the very, very last handful of render on the main wall

 Then we peeled back the masking sheets over the stem wall - thick with inches of dropped plaster ...

 ... and made a neat finish onto the stonework.

 Finally, as with all the top coats, the starting-to-dry render is sponged down with lots of water to give a uniform finish and good weatherproofing.  And that's it - hopefully the last external plaster we ever need to apply to this building!  (Although lots more to do inside, of course, and loads of limewashing still to do)

 And there she is - rendered all round - not tidied up for the photo due to exhaustion and the urge to  walk down to Nidri for a couple of steaming pints of cider to celebrate

Direct hit

21 May 2016

We were sitting in bed, drinking tea, watching a wild storm through the windows when there was a sharp crack: Dave saw lightning flow down the supporting post and I saw a flash near the gang plug at the foot of it.  It was very scary. 

We always turn off the inverter and the internet in an electrical storm.  We lost a couple of inverters early on, and we've heard horror stories of fried computers from friends.  So we stayed in bed, wondering if our whole electrical system was crisped.

When the storm moved away, Dave turned on our electrics, and they were fine.  So we think it was St Elmo's fire in the bedroom.  Not something I want to experience again!

Almost there

19 May 2016

Second coat of the final wall finished.  We are working in strips the width of the scaffolding.  As we finished the second coat in the middle strip, it makes sense to leave the scaffolding in place and finish the middle first.

20 May

Despite a threatened thunderstorm, and drizzle first thing, we pressed on, made three mixes and finished the right-hand strip and the ground-level area.

Strange visitors

17 May 2016

Tuesday is our day off from plastering.  Art groups meets at 12 noon for a couple of hours, Jade comes for a guitar lesson from Dave, then Rosa comes to give singing lessons to Jade, Dave and me.  It's quite a busy day, and a significant change from the usual daily grind!

This Tuesday, though, we had unusual visitors.  Once or twice we have had wild birds fly in through the door in the south wall.  The first time, it was a Great Tit, exhausted from battering itself against the glass.  After twenty minutes of stealthy movement and reassuring murmuring, it let me get close enough to slide a finger under its feet and lift it out through the window.

Today, though, it was a swallow.  Once before we've had a swallow come in - it swooped about madly, then went out the way it came in.  This one, though, seemed happy to stay, perched on the curtain rail.  Two others were going frantic outside, and eventually found their way in.  And then we were treated to what must have been a courtship process - the first one was the female, the other two were competing males. 

Lots of swooping, and resting, and more swooping.  Then the cat came home, and was fascinated.  I hadn't realised the female was resting on the window sill when the cat went upstairs.  I chased the cat away, and the swallow let me pick her up, so I released her through the window.  Eventually, the males worked out she'd left and took themselves off too.  Quite an entertainment.

Loitering with ...

16 May 2016

Plastering in the morning, second coat going on on the west wall

 Then in the afternoon, on a sudden whim, we finally got round to pitching the tent to see if it had rotted away over five years in storage.  Actually, it was fine, and nice to find we could still remember how to put it up.  Will leave it up for a few days to air, then maybe go camping at the beach sometime this summer?

Everything rosy

14 May 2016

Things in the garden are burgeoning:

 The artichoke plants are over two metres tall, and making lots of artichoke buds

 The lemon tree is awash with lemons, just need them to turn yellow now ...

 This is one of our Moringas, about 10cm tall, under a cricket-proof net.  They seem to be doing okay.  We've just put in a handful of new seeds as well, to try to improve on the five surviving plants we have at the moment.

And our first rose - how very beautiful.  We are growing these as a salad crop - apparently there's more vitamin C in rose petals than in oranges.  May be apocryphal, but very pretty in salads anyway.

Man at Work

14 May 2016

Dave complains that my photos tend to concentrate on the plaster going on, not the back-up work of filling buckets and making mixes, so now we have a new delivery of sand and lime, I took some shots of Dave at work.

 That's the north wall finished - the last strip done after the masking sheet over the stem wall is removed.  Nice neat finish.

So, now we are on the last wall of all.  Only one coat on, so two more to do.

An Awkward Fence

12 May 2016

When we get deliveries, the big trucks can't get round the 90 degree bend in the track, and have to go through an olive field - with the permission of the owner.  But a few months ago, a new, scruffy, barbed wire fence was put up where the route through the field meets our track.  We were obviously concerned.  Mainly because we were going to need more sand and lime pretty soon, but also we worried that our trucks had damaged the olive trees, or that we'd fallen out with a very nice neighbour.  As Christos doesn't speak Greek and it was quite a complicated discussion that was needed, we enrolled Lin, our Greek teacher, and went in search of him to find out why the fence had appeared.

After a lot of chasing around, we obtained a phone number and Lin enquired.  It turned out that that end of the field wasn't his, and he continued to have no problem with us bringing in deliveries that way.

He suggested that the fence was just a marker to prevent the council taking too much land if and when they ever adopt the track as a road.  So we decided to move it for a truck, then replace it after the delivery.  Hurray!  We can press on with the final coats of plaster

My favourite wild flower is out just now - it's called 'Love in the Mist' and goes from this fabulous flower to an enormous distinctive seed head.  Lots of them in our field.

Final section of the North Wall

11 May 2016

Plastering continues.  We've decided to start by finishing the section facing north - the point where the last wall to be completed meets the wall we started with.

Making ACV

8 May 2016

Having read up on the benefits of apple cider vinegar (ACV) we shipped in a bottle and Dave rather liked it, so he researched making his own.  Next thing we had a seething bowl of cut apples for a few days, that were then strained and bottled.  Some weeks to go before we find out if it has worked!

First crop

5 May 2016

After a morning's plastering, we pottered around the garden.  Dave decided to dig up the first potatoes, as the plants were looking a bit tired. 

 Not a bad crop.

 The kale, recovering from last month's sheep attack

 New arrivals: kiwi vines, two females and a male

 And my gooseberry bush - with at least two goosegogs!

This is a very pretty bank covered in pink wildflowers at the side of the rustic steps

Hornet worries

29 April 2016

We have noticed that one of those nasty inch-long hornets has been flying in through our open door, and disappearing into one of the gaps between bales in the interior wall.  This is the last part of the bale walls to be plastered - it needs the scaffolding, but is not as urgent as getting all the exterior done.

But we really don't fancy a hornets' nest in the living room, so we propped up a ladder and took plaster up in buckets to seal off that particular area.  Seems to have fixed the problem.