limewash

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It’s All White Now (well almost…)

May 30, 2010 in The Build by fullmonte | 1 comment

So – time to paint the building, we thought… Hmmm – it’s very high!!!!  And the steps beside it make it very tricky…  Ladders just weren’t going to cut it.  Nope – scaffolding was the thing.  But where to get it?  How to put it up?  And more importantly how much would it cost?

During the limewash frenzy of the working weekend, I had mentioned our dilemma to Therese. She thought she could help.  A follow up call a few days later secured us an amazing deal: she would get scaffolding to us, complete with the men to erect it for us, in return for a few hours strimming of the garden of one of her properties and a meet & greet for some rental customers.  Done!

The scaffolding arrived the next day and within a couple of hours it was up.  Time to get busy!


We had only expected the guys to erect scaffold on the outside but they helpfully put up a structure inside the kitchen so we could reach the gable end inside too.


We were able to use the hefty, metal scaffold boards on top of the compost loo walls to reach the other gable end inside:


It was incredibly sastifying, turning everything from grey to white but the scaffold was a real pain to navigate around – Steve’s head was a patchwork of bloody scabs where he kept hitting it on low poles!  We raced to slap on the 2 coats of lime wash needed everywhere so we could get the damn stuff down. But wasn’t it worth it…

And this shot shows one side of the building painted too – Steve (of the long legs and long arms) managed to do this using only a ladder…

And the ‘well, almost’?  Well, we still have the other gable end to paint and are hoping to use the scaffold boards on top of the compost chambers and a ladder on top of those. The other side of the building is yet to be done but it is the easiest to reach and will only require a ladder.  Wednesday the scaffold will probably be collected so if we have time before then we might paint the workshop too!

We have saved ourselves 100’s of euros by using limewash as our medium.  We bought 2 big bags of lime which cost us just over 5 euros and that will be enough to finish everything inside & out & probably to paint the workshop too!  What a bargain!!!

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Progress report

May 20, 2010 in Camping News, The Build by fullmonte | No comments

Sorry if the last post was full of doom & gloom.  I’ve decided to cheer myself up by posting about all the stuff we have achieved.  This is a scheduled post as we are now back on the campsite…

I’d like to say this was an update on the BIG LIST but actually most of the things left on that list are staying there for the foreseeable future until we get a) good weather; b) a period of time with no events, no friends staying or other distractions and c) some more help (please let the promised volunteers actually turn up!).

We’ve decided to focus on the high impact stuff – doing the things that visually make a difference so that the place looks good, even if when you peer into the corners of the place they turn out not to be fully tiled etc.

So, here’s a little round up:

  • The glass bricks are mostly in – just the last window in the last loo to do.  We haven’t been able to tackle this up until now because the cables for the solar PV were threaded through the window.  Now that the solar cupboard has been made and the cables have been re-positioned through the wall we can get on and fill that last gap.  Here are some pictures of the windows:

  • We have hooks up for towels – by each shower and around the wash basins – and strings of battery operated lights adorn the wash basin area at night:

  • The basement is painted & has a lino floor down.  We took everything out, sorted & organised it and moved it back in.  We now have a wardrobe and chest of drawers for our clothes in the inner sanctum, which is also the storage area for tents & tiles.  The main room now has an office area with a desk we can work at; cushions for the chairs are neatly stacked & readily available; there’s a cleaning cupboard with all the mops & brooms; there are tables containing gardening stuff and an area for ‘illumination’ (candles, gas lamps & refills, solar lights etc).  I need to take more pictures but this is what it looked like with the walls painted and the floor down:

  • The solar fairy lights have been positioned around the site, lighting the steps and walkways.  The solar spot lights are up (bar 1, which will be installed any day now) so the entrances to the building are all well lit and 2 spot lights illuminate the kitchen area at night.  It’s a tricky ole job because they need to be positioned at night to ensure the angle and height of the spotlight is really lighting the important areas.  Here’s Steve up a ladder, drilling holes at night:

  • The solar equipment is all tidied away in a wall cupboard, which has been made strong enough to accommodate a second battery as we hope to be generating enough power in the sunny months to charge 2 batteries:

  • All the window ledges in the kitchen area have now been tiled, so we have a smooth surface to perch on and, more importantly, a neat frame for the plastic bottle windows to fit into.  This picture was taken on the rainy morning of the working weekend but shows the nice brown tiles of the window ledge:

  • And here’s the new design of the plastic bottle window and us making them (proper picture to follow when the entire window is complete and the rough wood frames have been painted!):

  • Most of the strimming, stumping & raking around the site has been done now, although this is a bit of an endless task and we have deliberately left some areas to let the new grass grow as long & as strong as possible.
  • The 45,000 litre water tank is pretty much full – just one more tank of fuel in our trusty pump and that should do it!
  • The wooden fence that will be planted with beans and provide additional screening for the lower camping terrace is finally up.  It looks great and its strung with solar fairy lights so its all lit up at night and provides a way-marker for the camping area.  Just got to get planting those beans!

This weeks tasks include:

  • painting all the grey cement still left inside the building
  • finishing the plastic bottle windows and getting them fixed into place
  • putting the last 4 glass bricks in
  • limewashing as much of the outside of the building as we can reach and as the weather allows
  • re-digging paths and using the piles of gravel and sand we have to create smooth, mud-free trails around the site

Watch this space to see how much we actually get done!

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The Green Grass of Home

May 3, 2010 in Camping News, The Build by fullmonte | No comments

There is a tradition here of going up into the hills to camp and light fires on May 1st, so we thought, what the heck – we’ll go up to our own hills and camp & light a fire.  So we moved into our other ‘home’ this weekend…

Our new tent is up and a couple of others too:

The kitchen is starting to take shape again after having been locked away in the basement for the winter (it now includes the new units we got from Mil):

The showers are getting lots of action as we relish soaking our bones in the hot (free!) water and we are generally getting the camp open again.  It feels good… and yes, the grass IS growing.

The ants loved the grass seed: they collected it in mounds and took it to their nests.  We sowed more.  The soil was too poor to sustain growth.  So I collected soil from surrounding woodlands and lugged it in buckets to the worse areas.  The rain that had been a feature of most of April stopped round about the time we sowed our grass seed.  So we have been watering it with a sprinkler – diligently.  Love has made the grass grow!

Now that Steve’s kicked his various bugs, we are hard at work again.  We have started tiling the last shower:

We’ve tiled the window ledges in the kitchen area so they will be smooth surfaces to perch things & bums on.  Most of the glass bricks are in the windows in the loos – just one more to go.  We’ve experimented with limewash and are pretty happy with the results:

We’ve started the long, slow process of strimming, stumping, raking and picking up the stones around the garden and on all the camping terraces:

The BIG LIST is getting smaller… and we are looking forward to a productive weekend ahead as a bunch of our friend have agreed to help us tackle some more big tasks.

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BIG LIST update

April 15, 2010 in Frugal Living, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build by fullmonte | 1 comment

Back in November last year we compiled a BIG LIST of all the high level tasks and I outlined them in this post, promising to update our progress every month…  Mmm, I’ve been a bit rubbish, haven’t I???

Well, nearly 6 month later, here’s an update on progress and the latest news of what’s on the BIG LIST now…

  • drainage

Ur, well, the first item on the list & that’s where it all started to go wrong!  The drainage ditch turned into our Elephant Task and no matter how much we broke it into bits, we got so tired of chewing those chunks!  But the drainage on the main campsite is now DONE.  We still get soggy patches where underground springs mysteriously appear when the water table rises, but things are better.  It’s still a quagmire when it really buckets down but that’s mostly because of all the distrurbed earth which Nature needs to knit together again. 

  • installing our rainwater collection systems

This is a tricky one.  Water is so precious, of course we should be saving every drop.  But unless we can salvage a couple of big water butts from somewhere, we simply cannot afford to invest in the materials needed to install the system properly.  Our first check list for whether we do a task or not is: how much will it cost?

Thankfully, the water tank we filled up at the start of last summer is still half full!  So having enough water for everything is NOT an issue, in fact we are desperately trying to empty the tank so we can fill it fresh from the spring before it dries up.

  • finishing our greywater irrigation system

We started with grand plans for this project but the cost of fancy joints and weird plumbing bits was crazy so we are going to make do with bits of hose and ’stuff’.

It’s been a stressful time on the greywater front.  We were keen to cover the ugly pipes and protect them, but were concerned about piling mud on them and screwing up the levels.  These pipes have been lovingly positioned and levelled to have a 2% drop all the way along – not too much or the water will rush through the system and not be properly filtered, nor too slight a gradient or the water will not run fast enough and stagnate.  After enclosing them with earth we waited for it to settle and then had to tweak the system a little, straightening the pipes and inserting stones as rests in places.  The system still works; the water flows through well.  The problem now is with the last bath.  We noticed a slight leak when doing the landscaping around the end of the system.  It was too wet to use Plumber’s Mait or other good stuff so Steve cemented over the entire piece where the pipe exits the last bath through a rubber bung.  Our mistake was then carrying on regardless, in denial that the fix may not have worked…

It still leaks, really badly.  And now there’s a frigging stone wall enclosing it and a load of dirt!  The only hope is to dig the bath out and attack the problem from the inside.  Watch this space to see if this works or if we have to dismantle the entire stone wall:

  • levelling ground to create flat terraces for outside eating areas, a  Boules pitch and lots more tent pitches

We’ve levelled a lot of ground dealing with the spoil from the drainage ditch.  The area we played Boules on last year will be less lumpy & bumpy & sloped than before, if not pristine!  Ideally, we’d like to build a proper pitch – a frame filled with sand maybe – but not exactly a priority for this year.

We’ve cleared the ugly pallet fence between the raised beds and the stream so there is a bigger space there for tents and Steve has great plans to use the last of our sleepers and level earth on the very lower terrace.  But even if this doesn’t get done, with a little stumping, strimming, raking and mowing we can accomodate up to 30 people quite easily.  More level ground would enable us to space the tent pitches out much more, but even so tents will still be less cheek by jowl than many campsites!

  • making a rough, covered outside kitchen near to the eating area and BBQ

No progress made on this at all but we have all the raw materials: sink (reclaimed from the side of the road); pallets to make rough decking; an old table for a work surface – and it will be one of those projects that just gets done because it HAS to (hopefully in time for the Full Moon Party!).

  • repairing the critical collapsed terrace walls with planted tyre walls

Mmmm.  We have tyres.  We have tidied up the area around.  That’s as far as we’ve got and in truth we may not get an entire wall done this season.  After all the inside jobs have been done, it’s next on the list…

  • tile the last shower & the urinals

We can’t put the tiling off any longer!  We need to get the building functioning again.  Everything was moved down to the basement or back to Topla and the shower block has been left empty and abandoned.  We need to be living up there as soon as possible so that means finishing the last shower, tiling the laundry sink, installing the urinals and tiling around them and half tiling the loos so they are easy to clean.  We also need to fix the position of the cooker so we can tile around it for ease of cleaning and that means fixing the position of gas fridges & more cupboards in the kitchen.  Then we can lime wash all remaining bare plaster, move all the furniture and stuff in… and enjoy!

A new addition to the BIG LIST, all wrapped up in being able to move on site soon is:

  • clean, mouse-proof and limewash the basement

We need a proper usable space to set up an office, store clothes and things, have a cold store for food stuffs etc and the basement is it.  We need to tell the resident mouse (there’s only ONE mouse, right Kirst?!) to move on and get it cleared, cleaned, painted and organised!

  • paint the outside of the buildings

This is one of the tasks on the list for our work day on 8th May.  I painted a patch on the back of the workshop in limewash last year and it still looks great, even after all the ravages of winter.  A bag of lime is pennies (in comparison to the price of paint here) and will make loads of wash, a real cheap option for us and less harmful to the environment.  Having a sparkling white building will make an enormous difference – and help us sell the site in photos better!

  • plant the flower & veg beds

Made reasonable progress on this task.  There’s still lots to do and there’s a bunch of plants queuing up to put their roots down but there’s no chance of doing much more until the rain stops.  We desperately need some hot dry weather to follow the deluge of the last few days.  We haven’t been on site for the past 3 days due to the appalling weather and I dread to think what’s going on up there….

Since we are determined this year to keep greedy cows and intruders out, there’s a new task on this list:

  • secure the boundary

In practice this means: running barbed wire along the edges of the boundary where a cow can possibly invade and electrifying the main fence to deter the village kids and travellers who got on site, poked around and stole stuff last year.  If the barbed wire doesn’t get them, the x 1000 volts will!

Another key task is:

  • build a generator shed

We need a proper weather-proof, sound-proof, easy access structure to contain our trusty genny.

We have been gifted some great wooden stairs from Keith & Maja so now we need to treat them with wood preservative and install them firmly but that takes care of:

  • create safe, stable access at each end of each terrace

We now need to start making some rope hand rails or some such stuff to help support people safely down them!

Finally (well, never ‘finally’ because the list never ends but…) now we’ve dismantled the old compost heap we need to:

  • build a new compost

Gulp!  Still a bunch of stuff to do.  Thank God there’s no guests arriving until end of May!  And we are feeling a little less over-whelmed since we’ve had news that a potential volunteer, Jaime, will be joining us in May for 1 or 2 weeks; a volunteer from Spain, Pedro, is looking to join us in June and will possibly stay for a couple of months if we all get along well and last, BUT NOT LEAST, Nik, dear Mr Nik, without whom it all wouldn’t have been possible last year, is coming back this summer.  Hurrah for willing helpers!  Anyone else fancy it?

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