October Work Party - Part Two - Building

We did a lot of building at the work party, worked on 5 projects, I think.

On the pumphouse we worked on the shake roof. To make everything fit together the shakes need to more or less rectangular, not curved, so any curved parts need to be cut off before they are put up. The way a shake roof works is using lots of overlap. The bottom row is shorter than the rest and the second row over laps it completely, with the seams staggered. You nail two nails into each shake at the top so the next row will cover the holes. You need to carefully position the shakes to cover both the nails and the seam between the shakes below. Since we split blocks of wood of different widths the shakes are different widths, the wood we split the shakes from were all the same length though, so the shakes are about the same length, which is nice. You want the tops of each row to be even straight lines, unless you want to make patterns. You need to leave a gap between a shake and the ones to the left and right of it so they will have room to expand when they get wet.

We also did finish plastering on the pumphouse, the wave pattern is tough especially for beginners, much harder than simple straight surfaces, since you want it really smooth and need to worry about all the edges.

Some of the group worked on putting dirt back on the El Nido roof, I will write more about the whole roof fixing project later.

Most of the rest of the building during the work party was plastering, we did a lot of plastering at strawberry house, the east and west walls on the outside, and some of the north wall. After the plain plaster was put up Liz did some sculpture on the west wall.

Monday morning half the group worked on putting finish plaster up on the roof of the garden wall, now it is ready for the linseed oil to protect it from water. It is an experimental roof made of cob with redwood branches put across it then cobbed over to make the overhang. The wall needs a roof to protect it from rain, otherwise it slowly erodes.

On Monday we also plastered the outside of the second bedroom at madrone house, the rest of the house is pretty much done but that room has been sitting unfinished. We wanted to get the first coat of plaster on the outside of the light straw clay and the strawbale walls before it got rainy since it protects the straw from moisture.