Sunday morning started with coffee and plaster in equal measures...
Kevin
Joy:
Sunday, we spent the morning and afternoon plastering. Once we got the plaster mixed, it was time to smash it into the wall. It's not like spreading frosting, but more like scrubbing it into the gaps in the wire mesh and straw to make it stick with sheer brute force and physics. Then you watch it slide off and smack to the ground below. And then you do it again, and sometimes you climb up and down a ladder after every third or fourth smack.
Despite how it sounds, in the presence of friends, it was actually pretty fun, and we became quite the plaster connoisseurs, reveling in a good batch of plaster and being loath to stop plastering when we had a particularly good batch going. How gratifying it was to work and work and then step back and WHOA—there is plaster ON A HOUSE. I particularly relished getting to climb on the scaffolding and then on a ladder on top of that—a far cry from my daily life which involves exactly no climbing apparatus.
We packed up and left Tara and Tyler on Sunday evening, with 1.75 walls plastered with their first coat. I am anxious to hear how it cures before the next coat goes on! There will be two more layers of plaster to come, and each takes a week or so of curing, but now it looks less like a house that the big bad wolf would blow down, and more like a place that one could snug up in on a cold winter night.
I am continually amazed at all that Tyler and Tara have done. Kevin and I are planning to build in VT too, but not homesteading. Seeing all the work and emotional cost to what they're doing is a reality check. And through it all they continue to be loving and kind to each other and remember that this is going to be the home that they have dreamed of rather than an endless chore.