Miscellaneous Interior Tasks

After getting the water and sewer connected in February, I've been ticking off the list of things that need to get wrapped up before I place the final layer of adobe floor:

1. Trowel on and smooth out the finish pigmented coats of clay plaster on the wall
2. Have the plumber fit out the water heater, toilet, shower, etc.
3. Have the electrician finish installing plugs, lighting, etc.
4. Fit and install the ceiling panels
5. Install the threshold at the entry door
6. Hang interior door (there's only one!) and install door handle

These tasks are not quite wrapped up, but I'm getting close.  Here are some visuals:

Ready for action

I just need a rod and shower curtain and I'm ready to go.

Bathroom ceiling before curtain rod.

This part of the ceiling is finished--just a few more
panels to fit behind the camera.

Oak threshold at the entry door.  You can see that the final layer of adobe mix
will bring the floor level up about 3/4" to be even with the threshold

Clay plaster walls are finished.  Note the truth window on the right side,
where you can peer into the interior of the wall and see the
light straw clay infill between the wood studs.

A New Appreciation

Most of us have a tendency to take everyday things for granted.  Like when you sprain an ankle--the ability to walk comfortably anywhere you want seems like a luxury when you're hobbling up and down stairs on crutches.

I found the same to be true regarding a flush toilet.  Roughly nine months after I initiated my sewer and water hookups, I have a newfound jolt of satisfaction when I push that silver handle down.  

Sewer and Water

I have to say... building mall does have its disadvantages.  Take for example, the site work to connect to the public sewer and water mains.  I lined up a site contractor before I ever broke ground in July 2015.  He was a couple weeks later than I'd hoped in excavating my foundation, but no big deal.

Fast forward to Fall 2015: I had my plumbing roughed in inside the house and I requested that the contractor proceed in connecting the sewer and water services.  After a couple months back and forth, he wasn't able to fit me in, so I made do for the winter.

2016 kept me busy with work, so I only made sporadic progress on the house.  At the end of summer, things were finally moving along and I set the goal to move in around Thanksgiving. Mid September, I scheduled my connections for the following month  Long story short, my small job was evidently a lower priority than the bigger, high-dollar jobs.  He started on the sewer November 23 and finished the water on January 31, 2017.  Granted, there were many weather-related delays in there, but there were also plenty of fine days with the machines sitting idle.

Sorry for venting.  Thanks for bearing with me, but the lesson learned is to budget way more time for contractors to do their thing than you would expect.  It is classic for them to be juggling multiple jobs at one time.  Here are the photos:

The existing sewer main was about 8' below grade.  The excavation gets pretty deep at the connection point!

My lateral had to run under an existing storm drain.  You can see that water was
filtering into the excavation, complicating matters.

They dealt with the water by excavating a little deeper and dumping stone in the bottom of the trench.  By running a pump buried in the stone, they kept that area they were working in dry.  This shows the 6" trunk line (green) and the 4" lateral connecting in from the house.  The trunk line will extend farther to allow a future connection for the main house to be built sometime later.

The water meter pit is in the foreground, with a 2" polyethylene service pipe.  In the old days, 3/4" or 1" was adequate, but with the new sprinkler codes, we need a larger pipe to feed the fire protection system.

The 2" lateral tees off to a 1 1/2" house service.  For now, I have a freeze-proof yard hydrant near the end of the tee.  When the main house gets built, this will be removed and the 2" line will be extended.

Attic Panels

There isn't a whole lot to show off, since the one photo makes it pretty self explanatory.  A few things come to mind:  First, we were pleased with the consistency and uniform finished face of the panels.  I wish I could remember the manufacturer, so I'll have to fill that in later.

Kudos to the framers for making sure the rafters were spaced exactly 24" apart.  Once we lined up the first panel, all the rest of the seems were almost exactly centered on the wood.

Many thanks for Mike W who suggested using a pneumatic stapler to tack the panels up.  He even loaned me his gun and provided the staples.  It made quick work of the job, and I have no concern that the panels will pull away from the framing over time. The tiny heads on pneumatic nails would not have held up.  The staples, for the most part, were set flush with the surface automatically, with only a few needing to be tapped down with a hammer.  My plan is to use an iron-on edge band to cover up the staple heads and joints.

I used a Krieg circular saw guide with my skill saw, using a plywood blade to trim the paneling.  It worked great: fast, and super accurate.  The edges were nearly as clean as the factory edges. 

No more hideous foam insulation to look at! I still need to install some of the trim peices to clean up the corners.

Bathroom Tadelakt

Tadelakt is not a well-known term.  Simply put, it involves making lime plaster water repellent by working in olive soap.  It is an ancient Moroccan technique that is simply gorgeous within a certain aesthetic.  For more info, you can learn a lot from an internet search or image search.  Feel free to start with this link.

 For better or worse, I am not at the level of craftsmanship to create a showpiece: I am basically treating tadelakt as a substitute for conventional tile because it is a low carbon, natural material.  I wanted the walls to have some color and not all pigments are "lime safe", and I found Earth Pigments to be a great resource.

This shows the final layer of plaster, including the green pigment, being applied to the north wall, below the blocking for the cabinets.  This layer is a couple millimeters thick (about 3 credit cards), which made it much simpler to mix.  Instead of the mortar mixer, which takes an hour to clean, I could do it in a 5-gal bucket.

With such a simple wall, I was done applying the plaster by 10:30.
It took the rest of the day to apply the olive soap, although it was not a continuous process.

FYI, I bought my olive soap from Black Soaps.  The info that comes with the product describes it as a very versatile product, so although I only used 1/10 of the little tub I bought, I'll be able to use it to clean throughout the bath, kitchen, windows, silver items, copper pots, the barbecue, boats, etc.  They even say it makes a great pet soap!

I used a four-step process:

1. Brush on a 1:20 mix of olive soap mixed in hot water. Polish vigorously with a semi-precious smooth stone.  This step was pretty time consuming (about 2 hours) and actually involved some muscle.  Take frequent breaks to avoid repetitive stress injuries.  Unfortunately, I didn't allow myself enough time to find a proper stone.  This is probably why my tadelakt isn't as shiny as many of the photos I see.  That's not important to me, though: I took a local rounded river-rock stone that had one nearly flat side and polished that one side to be reasonably smooth with wet/dry sandpaper.  Pretty low-tech, but it worked.  I found that my plaster dried pretty quickly, so my polishing was more to burnish the surface of the plaster, rather than to smooth out the larger irregularities.  I was never expecting a shiny, flat surface like a marble counter top, but I'm happy with the slightly irregular, mottled texture.
2. Brush on a 1:15 mix.  I used an older 2" natural bristle brush that was somewhat frayed and not suitable to cutting in clean edges anymore.  This quality, coupled with a circular motion worked well to ensure that the soap penetrated the complete texture of the plaster, rather than just sitting on top of the high spots.  I did another light polishing with the stone, just to be sure there were no remaining high spots.  Each layer dries progressively slower than the last.  After the first coat, the the top of the wall was  ready for the next coat by the time I finished at the bottom.  The second coat dried a little more slowly, so I used a small plastic bag filled with flour to smooth out the wet spots of olive soap so it would dry consistently
3. I didn't have to wait long between coats 2 and three: enough time for a snack, stretch, and sit-down.  The third layer was a 1:12 mix and took more time to work in with the flour bag.
4. By the time the 4th coat came around (also 1:12), the olive soap was sitting on the surface quite a while.  I'd brush on a section around 3-4 square feet, then move on to the next section.  Then I'd backtrack and use the brush to lightly smooth out the olive soap and move on to the third section.  Back tracking again, I'd smooth out the first section with the flour bag, and move on.  After the fourth section, the olive soap had mostly dried, but I'd do a final wipe-down with the flour bag to ensure there were no more wet spots.  Progressing in this way, I'd be working on 4 sections simultaneously.

After the walls were done, it was on to the floor using the same processes.  The only major differences were that this layer was about 3/8" thick (the max thickness for air to properly cure the lime), and I didn't add pigment.  Since this house is partly for demonstration purposes, I thought it would be nice to have some natural-color lime.

Note the extreme texture in the previous floor layer to ensure adequate grip for the finished layer.
I've taped the walls using a laser level to help get a level floor.

More than half done!  The left side, where the toilet goes, is level, and the shower drain on the right is depressed about 1".  I took the time on the previous two layers to depress them in order to keep the finished layer a uniform thickness.  

Done and treated with olive soap.  I used a sponge the next morning to get a rougher non-skid surface that is suitable for a shower.  There was some minor cracking, which I repaired over the next 24 hours by pressing down on the crack and smoothing out the lime.  That's one of the cool things about lime is that it is self-repairing for small imperfections  This process left the floor a little less uniformly smooth, but better to have a non-leaky floor!  

In the end, I can't expect perfection or professional results from myself since I've never done this before.  But after I take a step back, it's just fine and I end up with a special sense of accomplishment!

Change of Season

Saturday was one of those gorgeous late November days you dream of having on a weekend: sunny, upper 60's and light wind.  Friends and I spent the bulk of the day happily tackling several tasks on our sailboat.  Until precisely 4:23, when the weather signaled that it was time to quit for the day.  We could hear the wind coming with the cloud bank, and practically instantaneously, the wind increased from a near calm to 30 mph gusts that whipped debris into our fresh paint (damn!).  The temperature dropped 10-15 degrees over the next 30 minutes.

So how is this relevant to the house?  Earlier that day, the interior temp was in the mid 60's.  Sunday, was a brutally windy day (gusts to 40 mph), with a high temp in the mid 40's with mostly cloudy skies.  The house sat un-visited with the windows closed and the heat off.  Monday morning, with the wind still gusting to 30 mph and overnight lows around freezing, I came in around 7:30 to find the interior temperature at 57 degrees.  But at least the sun was out!  By 11:00, the passive solar brought the temp up to more respectable:

I guess the framers were right when they said I'd be able to heat the place with a candle!  Perhaps the more noticeable experience is stepping inside and hearing the noise of the roaring wind diminish to virtually nothing!  The house has no creaks or other indication of the nasty weather outside.  And all thanks to simple stuff like sand, straw, wood, clay and paper!

Pigmented Clay Plaster

The plan all along was to use a pigmented finish clay coat as the finished color of the Light Straw Clay walls.  I have enjoyed working with the American Clay products.  They have an easy to follow system, an extensive array of colors to choose from, and best of all--excellent instructional videos on their website.

I'm doing two coats: the first has one packet of pigment per bag of LOMA clay.  This is the roughest mix they have, and is a good base for the final layer, which is finer-grained (Porcelina, in my case).

One tip they list is to use a 7-gallon mixing bucket to avoid creating a mess during the mixing process.  After looking into it, I found this would be hard to source, and relatively expensive.  It turns out, I had a 5 gallon bucket that I had already cut the bottom off of.  Problem solved for free!  I just stuck this in the black bucket and had no trouble mixing, even though I didn't caulk the white extender in place.

You can see the plaster going on, with the darker sections at the bottom right.  This layer is only the thickness of a credit card (about 1 millimeter).  Despite pre-wetting the clay, the clay layers were drying so fast that it was hard to blend the fresh plaster into the previous row.  Perhaps colder temps (it was in the mid 70's and pretty dry), or a better pre-wet would help with this.  Lessons learned for the final layer.  Three test spots are visible on the right.

Here is a closeup of the three test patches in cool, morning light.  The one on the right is what I placed on the walls: one bag of pigment to one 50 pound bag of plaster mix.  Middle is two bags of pigment, and the left is three.

Same test patches in warmer afternoon light.  What would you pick?  I'm going with the middle one.

This shows the first corner at the end of the day, with the sort of splotchy drying in progress.

And the same area fully dried in warm evening light.  With a flash, this looks very washed out, so I didn't include that photo. 

I'm quite pleased with how the transition came out between the drywall above the window and the clay plaster on the Light Straw Clay.  Thanks to Kate for the glass art!

Wish I'd cleaned off the window sill for the picture.  I wanted the wood to protect the corner, figuring it would be prone to damage.  In the end, I think I prefer the look of the solid wood window sill that I built in the kitchen and bathroom.

This is also a preview for the next post: Tadelakt