Rendering prep

Lots of prep work this weekend for the renderer, who's arriving from Sale on Sunday night for a Monday morning start.

First things first, access to the walls. I'm pretty good at digging holes; not so good at filling them in again afterwards. So for a couple of months I've been dodging the trenches around the building in which the stormwater plumbing and water tank outlet pipes are buried.

Partly I've been putting this off because I need to pack around the pipes with sand to protect them (and the sand pile is at the top of the hill where the main water tank is), but mostly it's because I tend to do things at the last possible moment. Usually because I've got other more urgent things to get done, but in this case just because I've been putting it off :)

So it's sand first: 

Then backfill and smudge smooth.

As usual it only took a couple of hours to do and the result is well worth the effort. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner.

Maybe it's because...

Digging is fun!

A little careful manoeuvring later, and it's done.

So with the ground work sorted out, time for Rendering Prep Part 2. Window sills.

These I have been putting off, for the simple reason that Hebel, How I Hate Thee. The thought of having to cut more lengths of this stuff with a nice 15º angle on the rear has been sapping my will to live, and so the window ledges have gone ledgeless these past months.

Ledgeless no more, however. And rather than open a vein cutting new pieces, I'm recycling. The bits I ended up using were offcuts from the tops of the walls, which strictly are not quite as deep as they should be. But I care little for this talk of precision, I have window ledges!!

Yeah, OK. I can hear what you're thinking. They're not perfect in a lot of places, and they'll need patching. But I don't care - I have window sills :)