Everyone
knows what they were doing on the day they heard that Boris and Nigel
and all those other loons guaranteed that Britain would get its bendy
bananas back and that dirty rotten forriners would be surrounded by a
huge brick wall and barbed wire. Or something.
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Boris arrives at the office for his first day as Foreign Secretary |
For us, we were in the badlands of Wales on a two-day practical course all
about the joys of lime and where to stick it. You would have read a
blog all about it by now if Dawn could be bothered to write it, but she
can't. It's not even like she's got anything better to do, like earn a living. Sheesh.
Anyway, one thing we learnt on the course at Ty-Mawr, which is one
of just a few reputable lime product manufacturers and suppliers in the
pre-anarchic UK, is something we'd been wondering ever since we
first started on this magical journey of marvel and mishap - how to pronounce
Ty-Mawr. The best way to write it is that it rhymes with See Flower or
Flea Power or Tree Hour.
It's Ty (like 'tea') and Mawr (like 'sour' but with an M). It's Welsh, innit.
So now you know. Accept no substitutes and feel free to correct people with confidence and authority. Tell them we told you so.
One of the other things we touched on was limewashing.
Limewashing is like painting but much, much more annoying.
Remember the last time you decorated your bedroom with one or two coats
of your favourite shade of matt avocado and lost the will to live as you
glossed the skirting? It's nothing as joyful as that. Not even close.
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The original brown lime surfaces were a patchwork of new and old repairs using regular filler or lime |
Of course we only really learnt that lesson back at The Lodge when
we tried it. Across at Ty-Mawr - staffed by very nice, knowledgeable, down-to-earth pro-lime nerds, essentially - we were told that although it's not a
decorating finish that suits everyone it's authentic,
environmentally-friendly and fully breathable, which is exactly what
we're after. We saw lots of examples, all in limewashed rooms at the
beautiful Ty-Mawr working family home (it's a funny old set-up in a beautiful part of the country), showed the experts some photos of our
Living Room, asked some pertinent questions, got our hands dirty with some excellent practical
experience and left assured that we'd get the uniform, level finish we
were after on the ceiling and walls with just two or three coats even
though the more traditional finish is somewhat patchier, which makes it
an acquired taste.
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The olds. Absolutely clueless. |
We drafted in my folks and aunt for the inaugural first coat and
bought five buckets, five brushes, five pairs of safety glasses, the
same amount of gloves and some party sausage rolls, in addition to a
Screwfix electric paddle mixer (which later exploded) for the white pre-mixed limewash which we brought back from Ty-Mawr.
Now the thing about limewash, and where it differs significantly
to regular paint, is that at 3:1 water to lime putty (we also added casein which is a natural product made from milk and helps the wash 'stick' a bit better), it's not only thin
but it needs to be applied in very thin coats so that when the wash
begins to dry it doesn't leave behind a thick layer of lime which will
then crack as the water disappears. It's a bit of a faff but one we had
steeled ourselves for.
The other thing about limewash is that it's totally invisible for hours.
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Four coats in... grrr... |
When you're painting under normal circumstances you get your
brush, roller or pad, load it with the thick coloured gloop of your choice and smear it
over the wall in areas you haven't done yet. With limewash, however,
because you're wetting the surface with tap water (to arrest the
drying process) before brushing on your equally-wet and barely-coloured
limewash you can't see if you've already done that bit or you're missing
great swathes as you go. The only time it begins to become apparent is
when it starts to dry overnight and the coloured pigment begins to show itself (which is a very impressive reveal in the morning, by the way). But that's when you realise you need another coat all-round. Then another. Then another. Ad infinitum.
After four coats on the ceilings and walls over 10-or-so days - and with the unwanted 'traditional' patchy, rough limewash finish still very much in evidence -
we gave up because we were getting nowhere. It just wasn't worth the effort and despair. Each coat went on just as
infuriatingly-transparently as the last and the whole room was taking a
day or more (with at least a day in between while it dried) in return for
absolutely no progress whatsoever.
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The cavalry! |
Not only were the walls patchy and uneven, even where they'd been limewashed earlier, but there was
lots of deep yellow staining bleeding through on the ceiling, perhaps
from the old original lime that was still up there or residue left over from the
Artex. Either way we couldn't live in a room that looked as though it
had been a gentleman's smoking parlour for the last century so we went with the alternative - also recommended by Ty-Mawr - clay paint.
Once we knew the fourth failed coat of limewash had dried the
ceiling took one coat of Earthborn 'White' - eliminating the jaundiced patches; the walls took a single coat
of magnolia 'Vanilla' and the two feature walls by the Pantry took two coats of 'Cat's Cradle' grey, with delicate cutting-in around the brick
detail.
And the results are excellent. The coverage was great with a pad and because
the 'paint' was pretty thick it covered the patchy white with ease - and
you could see where you'd already been!
The only downside was that where old, original lime plaster had
been limewashed, particularly on the ceiling, the wash came away in small areas where a roller took
it off and reapplied it in lumps a few millimetres away (which we quite
like, weirdly, because it goes with the lumpybumpy look). A brush didn't have so much trouble though, and there
were no application problems when we clay painted over the limewash on
new plaster.
So at least the limewashing made for a reasonable undercoat which also sealed small cracks in the plaster, and the whole lot is breathable, too.
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Ignore the skirting - I haven't written about it yet |
The lesson: one person's 'perfect' is another person's 'problem'
and although I get where Ty-Mawr is coming from in terms of
authenticity and tradition when it comes to the finish, it's not always
going to be for us. The lessons in pointing, however, were right up our
street and that'll be the subject of the next blog... whenever I get it
written.
Must rush. I'm building a Post-Brexit Bomb Shelter and the excavator has just arrived...
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The £50 Energer paddle mixer from Screwfix. Only buy it if you enjoy seeing smoke coming out of your power tools before the job is finished. |
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