Lime plaster is the source of a lot of confusion for folks, myself included. It’s taken a long time to understand even the basic ins and outs of hydraulic lime, hydrated lime, slaking, carbonation, blah blah blah. When you start to read and hear about lime plaster, it sounds a bit like alchemy. Which it kinda is. Lime is totally unlike clay plaster, which seems so simple and innocent in comparison. Lime plastering is, after all, a chemical process that you really want to ensure goes according to plan.
This spring is all about plaster. I’ve been hired to complete the plaster work on a faswall block home in western Kentucky, including the clay plaster interior and a lime plaster exterior. There’s 3500+ total square feet of wall between the interior and exterior, which is no slouch. I just returned home from completing the clay and lime base coats with our crew. It was a big push and I’m glad to be done… well, at least until it’s time to go back and apply the finish, anyway.
Read on to see some images of the base coat clay plaster on faswall block!
Lloyd Kahn of Shelter fame has a new book out, titled Small Homes: The Right Size, and I feel much gratitude that our straw bale & timber frame home is featured within its pages. Lloyd’s books have been a big source of inspiration for me these past 10 years. Flipping through Shelter, Home Work, and Builders of the Pacific Coast have been powerful influences and have helped me to feel connected to the worldwide movement of folks creating beautiful, unique, hand-built homes.
Earthen floors are floors composed of compacted clay, sand, and straw. They are made flat and troweled smooth just like a concrete slab. However, the finished product is much softer on your feet… and on the earth itself. You can build an earthen floor with readily available materials. The labor input is quite high, but the material cost should be very low. And of course, the embodied energy is low, too — this is a very resilient, low tech method that can be incorporated in a variety of locales. Here’s a very short introduction and answers to common questions about earthen floors.
I’ve gotta admit, there’s something really visually appealing about “live edge” wood, that is wood with the natural outline of the tree left in place and not sawn square. Last year we bought a nice slab of cedar when deliberating about how to build a countertop between the two posts of our timber frame retrofit in the kitchen. This winter the cedar appeared dry enough to go ahead and make our own DIY live edge wood countertop. I’m glad we went this route. Here are the results.
In the fall of last year, I was contracted to build a small 8×16 timber frame wood shed and it was a great opportunity to get back to the ol’ chisel and mallet. I love this type of work — the materials, the scale, the tools, and the workflow feel so good. In my first post about the shed back in November, I shared some photos of the building process. Here are a few more pics of the raising and the finished shed.
In my recent series of posts, I’ve described the process for building and finishing a light clay straw wall. First there was mixing the light clay straw itself and stuffing it into wall cavities. Then I discussed how to prepare for plaster by making and installing wood trim, and coating the walls with a simple clay slip. Next I’ll describe how to make and apply a base coat (or scratch coat) clay plaster. Now it’s really getting fun.
A common design question when working with wood posts and concrete (or stone) is: how do you anchor posts to the concrete? Honestly, if we’re talking about a large structure with a lot of weight, gravity does most of the work and you don’t need a specific connection. A concrete post anchor may be necessary in a variety of situations, however. Here is a particularly slick way to anchor wood posts to concrete using a very discrete piece of hardware.
Gears quickly shifted this fall when I was contracted to build a wood shed in town. Up until a few weeks ago, I was trying to squeeze in as much work as possible on the ol’ homestead projects — the light clay straw outhouse in particular. I did end up getting the little outhouse to a good point. (Plastering season is over… unless for some reason we get a 60+ degree stretch in December. You never know these days, sadly.)
Anyway, the wood shed I’m currently building is a proper timber frame with wood joinery, which is obviously very exciting for me. Getting contracted to do a timber frame anything has been my goal since moving to Berea a few years ago. Here are a few photos of the building process.