July 2014 review

We're at the end of a good month for the Bauernhaus. Despite me being away for over a week, there was continued progress thanks to our brilliant plasterer. Not long after the last post, he put a second layer of plaster on the first floor ceilings, and instead of doing that with the aim of putting on a final, fine coat, he tried to make the base as smooth as possible, so we might be able to skip one more step. I think it worked. It's nicely shaped, though a little rough, but a once-over with a brush will give a nice texture which we can treat with a bonding undercoat and follow up with painting, or perhaps a slip plaster with colour we can paint on.

This has been done for the entire first floor, which is just fantastic. The beams were uncovered during the week, so we could get a real feel for it.  Skip to the bottom for a video, if you want a walkthrough!

Living room

Living room

First floor bedroom

First floor office ceiling

First floor landing

This week I also got back into building work after a week away on business, so I dived into plasterboard work, completing the kitchen ceiling and walls that required it, as well as the office, and some cable reorganising as I changed the lighting plans for the kitchen. The sockets are all ready too, so the kitchen is ready for final plastering, and of course, starting the floor.

 Up on the second level, the ceilings are still at the base coat stage, as it took a lot longer to dry up there, due to the fact there was no preexisting layer of clay plaster to help soak up the moisture.

As a side project, my wife started cleaning up the old window frame we want to install between the bedroom and the office (in the hole in the wall in the photo below).

Although I'd cleaned it with water, it was still rather dark and a little flakey (see
parrt on the right in the photo below), so with a special scraping tool and a Fein Multimaster, it's been brought down to the original wood, and looks the better for it. It will look great once it's oiled or waxed.

And speaking of old things, the former owners dropped by yesterday with this on their trailer.

It's a wash stand that used to be in one of the bedrooms of our house. They'd gotten it restored and gave it to us as payment for letting them store a trailer and log splitter in the barn for the last three years. Might use it for the bathroom!

And if all the above wasn't enough, here's another quick YouTube vid walk-through to show progress.

What a difference a week makes

I had to double-check that it is indeed only a week since I made those last videos. Since then, our plasterer has plastered over all the wall heating panels (easy job for him) and yesterday he and his mate spent about 11 hours pumping clay plaster onto ALL the ceilings. Back-breaking work in a sealed house (all the windows were covered in plastic), making it feel like a sauna. I was sweating and I was only prepping ceilings with mesh, and doing what I could to help.

When he started with the walls last Monday, it was an almost emotional experience to see a room suddenly transform. A real sign that we're on the downhill run to completion, with most of the shitty, dirty work behind us.

There's another small video at the bottom of this post, but now, a few highlights.

The living room is always a good indicator, and I think it looks great now with the base coat plaster on both the walls and ceilings.

The first floor bedroom looking similarly tidy.

It was a lot of effort on my wife's part to wrap each beam, but given the sloppy nature of clay plaster, definitely worth it, as we already invested a lot of time cleaning the beams.

Our plasterer did a test panel with one coat only, but given the varying depths and hence the uneven drying of the clay, it cracks. Not a big deal, as there'd still be a final coat of fine clay plaster to go, but the base coat will now go on in two stages, with the first one keyed as seen in the photos above.

 On the second floor, similar treatment for the walls, which are well cured now as they were done first.

There's a light switch hidden in the photo below.

And the top floor, west side is also done. The only plastering to do there.

All made possible with the plaster mixer/pumper/magic device.

What's important now is to air the place well, as it's going to take weeks for the clay plaster to dry.

Sadly, as I type, there's a storm raging outside, so we can't leave the windows open over night.

And in the spirit of the last post, a quick video view of the first floor, post-plastering.

Walkthrough, June 2014

I thought I'd try something new with this post, and use some videos to give a brief walkthrough of the house. Originally recorded to share with family only, I reckoned it's safe to make public, and give anyone interested a better idea of the layout of the house.

Recorded last Sunday (except the outside ones, which were recorded later), while the house was still nice and tidy after the Tag der Architektur, I've taken each floor separately, as well as a brief view of the outside. Slightly hungover from a party the night before, please forgive any stumbling over the English words for some things :) The pictures stuck on the walls were put there for Tag der Architektur, but as you'll see, i was quite useful for doing a before and after during the video.

If you find this useful, or if there are any aspects you'd like better explained by video, just leave a comment below. I'll do another set in a while after the initial plastering is complete.

You can watch the full playlist by clicking here, or take each one singly below (though I'd advise watching directly on YouTube to see a larger size.

The front

The back

The cellars

The first floor

The second floor

The third floor