Weeks 18 and 19 - Render and plastics

Right, what a busy couple of weeks! Sorry for the delayed blog post.

The last piece to achieve wind and watertight - the front door has been installed so the house is now secure. 

 uPVC fascias, soffits and barge boards all done. These have to be fixed in position before rendering.

Kai mortaring in all the verge. This stops the wind from lifting the edge tiles and the driving raining from getting into the roof void.

Fitting the guttering. I chose ogee style over round or square - it is about one and a half times the price, but it's really posh...

The renderers prepared the house ready to render the next day. The beading strips are fitted to all the corners to form a proper edge, which makes a really neat corner when it's all rendered.

 
160 x 25kg bags of 'Weber,pral M' Ivory mix render - 4 tons in all. This is a one-coat through-coloured monocouche render, which out-performs traditional sand and cement renders, and shouldn't need painting for 10-15 years. The powder gets poured into a machine which adds water and squirts the sloppy mix out of the end of a hose. The team of renderers on the end of it have to work quickly to get a consistent thickness and smooth it back to a nice finish.

It took the team of 5 just one day to render the whole house. About 4 hours of squirting, followed by a 2 hour lunch break to allow it to dry a bit, then 2 hours of rubbing it back.
These guys normally work on big commercial developments (like Bristol harbourside flats) - not quite sure how we persuaded them to do our little house but I guess sometimes it's just nice to do a one-off. They were recommended by Bob the Builder. Because they work so quickly, they cost the same as if it was hand-applied, which would take a week and a half - but the quality of finish is much better because it's all applied so quickly (no drying lines, and it's applied at high pressure which helps it key  into the concrete blocks really well).
The roll of pink on the scaffolding is a special plastic mesh which they apply to areas like over windows and door heads, where the patch of render will be fairly small and needs the added mesh reinforcement to stop it cracking.

The render is still quite wet at this stage and looks quite dark. As it dries it will lighten up, and should contrast nicely with the decorative stonework around the windows.

In the meantime, Kai is going great guns with the studwork upstairs. It feels strange now that the space has been divided up into rooms.

The outside finished, and a new addition to the plot - Dobby the landrover, which should come in useful...