The Apprentices Plastered the Common House's West Wall

The common house was on the land when Emerald Earth came into being and is an old hunting cabin, mostly made of plywood. It has been improved a number of times, a foundation was put in, it was expended a bit, etc. Continuing in this process on July 4th a group of people put a pretty thin layer of cob (clay, sand, straw and water) on a portion of the wall behind the stove in the common house. People wanted more thermal mass behind the stove to heat up and then slowly let it back into the room, and to protect the plywood wall. We also added 3 shelves at that time with arches over them. To get the cob to stick to the painted wood wall and stay there we put in a lot of nails and left them sticking out for the cob to grip. This dried in the last few weeks and now could be plastered. It was time for the apprentices to learn about finish plasters and this was the wall chosen to be used for that purpose. To get the plaster to stay on the old painted portions of the wall two methods were tried, reed mats were screwed up to cover most of the wall, and for a portion burlap was stuck to the wall using a sticky clay mixture as an adhesion coat which was brushed on. And tape and paper were put on the trim and other walls to protect them from the plaster.

A bunch of plaster samples using different mixtures were made a few days before the plaster was going to be needed to test recipes and see what to use. I think it had been mainly decided but it still needed to be tested, plus lots of other mixes were tried as a teaching tool so people could see what different mixtures would do. They were made on pieces of wood and laid out on the ground to dry.

All the apprentices worked on it as well as a guest instructor and Darryl who were teaching today. The first photo of putting up plaster is the guest instructor demonstrating and talking to the apprentices about applying plaster, she was a guest teacher here this week teaching about plaster. (She showed the community a great slide show last night full of pictures of beautifully plastered buildings.) I took a picture of each apprentices plastering, Steph, Anne, Anastasia, Justin, Steve and Mojo. And Darryl is on the right in the group photo. Everyone took turns mixing plaster outside and plastering, with three or more people working on the wall most of the time. If the edge of where you are working dries it is very hard to continue plastering there and not have a crack or noticeable spot where the two meet, so people plastered through lunch taking turns eating. They started about 11:30 or noon and finished the wall about 5pm, then cleaned up.

The finished wall looks beautiful, the whiter place in one of the nitches in the "were done" photo is dry already, the heat made it dry fast.