Hello Again

Brian and I have been busy. We are putting on doors, sealing up the walls and generally making the house ready to be partly furnished and also capable of hibernating until my visa status is refreshed. So it's been busy busy busy. We also have a workcrew from Dublin excited to come up and help us out, it's all who you know and social networking has it's benefits. Free labor for a weekend, awesome. I'm excited to meet most of them considering I don't really know who they are, friend of a friend, of a friend...etc.

Several sets of hands will be of great help in this final push toward securing a safe domain. I hope we have enough tools. Seeing how much we accomplished with Jake here helping out is a good measure of how productive we can be when it's not just brian and I. I also am desperately looking forward to our vacation. Brian had a nice vacation with his parents and seems to have returned to the site refreshed. I on the other hand, have been here forever, I've spent a total of 3 days not living on site since arriving at the end of July. And frankly, I am in need of a change of scenery. It will be nice to put the project on hold and out of mind for a short bit before returning for a final lockdown.

The weather has been cold at night (and during the day) hovering between 4 degrees Celsius at night and well, the thermometer says low teens during the day, but I think it's single digits. Depends if you're in the sun or in the gigantic shadow of a cloud. It also has taken to periodically dusting the area with enough mist to wet everything around and then become sunny again. It seems to be personally trying to annoy, which, mission accomplished. It makes me recall the monk yelling at the inclement weather in Holy Grail.

As for Post-Ireland, I have many many ideas floating around in my head that I've tested out on some people and generally trying to figure what I want/can (to) do. This is difficult because everything is contingent and the factors keep changing. So it's difficult to settle on a plan. We'll see what happens. What else?

Not much. I'm excited about buying beds. For the spare bedroom (the room we are currently working on) I'd like to put a double bed and a twin bed in there. I think that would be nice and since we raised the walls and roof height a considerable amount the room will be plenty big. I put a hold on a nice wooden wardrobe that I can't wait to put in the room. It'd be nice if it was just finished already! Furnishing a home is much much more fun than trying to renovate one. It's like a puzzle. Looking at a floorplan and thinking how you can fit all these odd shaped pieces in there. But I guess I've never been a fan of puzzles.

We're excited to play with lime today. Lime is considered a natural material (well it is) and has much less embodied energy than cement or concrete. In addition, lime is breathable much more breathable than concrete making it a much better building material. (It does shock me that much of the natural building movement and world is SO much better for the environment and rarely is it any more inconvenient to use than 'traditional' materials, it even out performs many traditional materials, and yet, nobody wants to use it, and somehow the Cement and PVC industries just have a stranglehold on the market. IT'S RIDICULOUS) So, with that backstory, we're even more excited to start working with Lime. It comes in bags just like cement, and its a fine powder. Since we'll be making a plaster/putty as a first coast and then a wash as a final coat we don't need to buy any aggregate (like you must when making concrete). It also is a 'fun' activity, playing with putty? Cmon! Smearing it all over walls? Yes, please. Takes me back to the good ol' days. So, we're excited. for the third time. Plus, it will lend a great white aesthetic to the inside walls (we'll save the exterior for some other time). I'm thinking it will look fantastic.

Well enough talk about it, I'm going to go get started. Hope everyone is having a wonderful hump day. (actually, yours hasn't started really yet. Good Luck, anyway.