Update cottage: 3 weeks later

Major progress has been achieved the past weeks, since the last update. The main structural changes have been completed, it's now down to the rendering of the walls and arches with a thin layer of plaster. I will make the plaster myself from white cement and either very fine sawdust of marble (marmolina) or sawdust of local limestone blocks (picadis). The mix ratio for both is 1 part cement on 5 parts of either marmolina or picadis. The plaster with marmolina is much stronger than the picadis plaster. I guess this is because the tiny particles of marmolina have sharp edges while the picadis is just deposited limestone.

The final work before I wrote this post was placing the line of roof tiles. The 'hollow' tiles are glued in a bed of regular mortar and the tiles on top of these are glued using polyurethane foam - maybe needless to mention, but if you ever do the same, do never use the regular foam as it expands with force. The special roof tile type gives the same expansion, but it not with force. Using the regular one would look very funny after half hour ;). The foam is boxed in by the tiles and on the front side by a small layer of mortar, so it is not being exposed to ultraviolet light, which quickly makes the foam bridle.

The final plastering cannot be done before we go to Sweden on Wednesday October 10. Besides the time factor we are reaching the end of our motivation curve. So Sweden will be fresh in more than one sense. In Sweden - by the way - we will be working on facades as well: 2 years ago we applied wood paneling to the outside of one of the faces of the house, primarily because the plaster of the walls was coming lose of the wall. I have always hated this limestone based plaster, which does not become hard like cement based plasters. It's very hard to work with, it does not stick very well and it takes ages before it gets dry. When we applied the wood panels, this side of the house looks typical Swedish : ox red wood panels with white lining of the corners and windows and door frames. The third good thing is that it increases the insulation of the house. In the 2 weeks we will be in Sweden we will be doing the same with the other 3 sides of the house. Which looks a big job, but the it's not really as the long sides of the house contain of about 50% of double opening doors and huge windows. And our friend Ondrej is assisting us with the work, we will meet him on the airport in Oslo.