We have been working on the interior finish plaster for just over a week now.. We are really happy with the progress! Here is our recipe we used for south and East walls. Our bedroom was a bit different color combo. We experimented with different fibers a bit and went back to good ‘ol horse manure, there is a reason it has been used for YEARS and YEARS for plasters.. And no it doesn’t stink once it dries.. The straw was hard to get on thin even after very fine filtering.. We bought Kaolin Clay from the pottery store in Victoria since it is light colored and doesn’t need any filtering, filtering our own clay through a window screen takes a very very long time! We started with a washed sand and then went down to an even finer washed masonry sand.. works even better. We have about 3 more days to finish the interior plaster, wahoo!
6 L Kaolin Clay
9 L Fine Masonry Sand filtered through window screen
1.5 L Calcium Carbonate
3 L horse manure or straw filtered through 1/8 screen (dry if doing a light color like this)
225 ml yellow iron oxide
30 ml brown Sierra coloring
some mixes we also used flour paste and some a capful of linseed oil
March 1st, 2012 at 1:24 pm
I’m totally inspired reading through your site. I’d never really considered that cob building could come out so awesome. I’ve been in the foundation stage of my own off grid dwelling for almost 20 years now and I intend to ‘borrow’ all sorts of ideas from your place… if you don’t mind…
Congrats on the occupancy permit, that’s a huge step. Hope the mortgage isn’t too much to bear. I’m trying to scheme a way to build without one but… we’ll see.
Enjoy!!
March 3rd, 2012 at 12:08 am
We’re glad to hear that you like our home. We borrowed ideas and inspiration from others too. That would be great to do it without the mortgage. It sure feels great to live in a home that has been sculpted by hand. If you get a chance to tour through a cob home, I am sure you will love the feeling.
Good luck with your building.