This is a C14th threshing barn with wattle walls to allow a good breeze during the threshing. I speak with some feeling about this, partly from experience. We have, unknowingly, been enjoying a ‘wattle’ wall for some time now. Okay, not the beautiful craftsmanship shown here. Such beautiful workmanship is normally covered up with ‘daub’ – a mixture of mud, straw and animal excrement, and they make most durable walls.
As I said, we didn’t have the workmanship. Instead, we had a piece of decaying board covered with stippled paint—something that came to light recently.
At first, we thought it just needed painting and budgeted accordingly. It was only when I poked a finger through it, I realised something was up. A builder confirmed it. He put his fist through. All these years we’d been living with a large section of the front covered only by a painted board. The builder was appalled. He replaced the rotten boards, covered them with a holding mesh and metal edges, then rendered the whole as though applying marzipan and icing to a cake. We had our 'daub' at last.
The first render drying
The rendering done, drying in readiness for painting.
I love before and after pictures, less keen perhaps on the cost or the ruined front lawn. Still, our whited sepulchre has been redeemed.
2 comments:
Yikes!
So why did they rot? Was it termites or poor materials?
Either way, I'm glad it's fixed. Very pristine now.
FYI: For some reason Feedly (my blog reader) has stopped showing me your posts. I'm not sure why unless I can blame Firefox for that too.
Troubleshooting browsers is still at the bottom of my list, but I'll add this to my investigation.
Poor materials. A thin board covered my paint exposed to the elements for 30 years. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did, though rot had eaten most of it. Ref feebly and fire fox, a minor but useful reminder of how we are now playthings of algorithms to be toyed with 😀
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