big holes

with the bedroom 'sort' of finished (still the window to put in), work has moved on to the lounge. simon's cracked on with the walls putting on a few layers of lime based plaster, sanding the lounge door (took me bloody hours - next time i vote to 'dip') and digging the floor mostly (what a joyous job...) :)

you can see in the picture above that we've taken the floor down about 30cm, the idea is to refill it with leca (little fired clay balls) and lime scree, then lay a lime floor which we're planning to polish. the leca works as a great damp proof course and is also an amazing insulator.

it's a bit like a pit in there at the moment, so can't wait to get the floor back in and the final plaster onto the walls.

now we just need a bed

finished skimming the walls with clay/sand mix, sand and linseed the beams, 3 coats of limewash, sand the floor and treat with 2 coats of osmo and the bedroom is finished and we are very excited.

yum yum

isn't it looking lovely? lovely door, lovely walls, lovely window, lovely floor...

lovely little door

along with the base coat of plaster, simon has saved our little cupboard door, and added a little window - very cute.

here are some before and after images to show how far we've come and how beautiful it's starting to look:

'ere, he's putting shit on me walls...

next up are the bedroom walls, a lot of time has been spent getting them back to a good starting point. loads of blown cob and earth plaster had to be removed, layers of plastic paint, random patches of concrete dug out - and now we can get into the reconstruction...

first off is to collect some fresh horse shit (complements of our four legged neighbours), add to this straw, water, course sand and some clay (locally sourced from St. Agnes). this creates a rather smelly, but strong and natural plaster that can be used to build up the walls as a base coat.

the result has been brilliant and really transformed the room.

i see the light!

been a while since the last post on this here board, but loads been going on with the little house.

first off we got two velux windows installed in the bedroom, they have totally transformed the room and at first i thought there might be too much light up there, but got used to it within about half and hour and feel that they'll make the room.

pretty as a picture

here's the beautiful boy 'aving a cuppa, innit...