Unlike President Nixon’s first speech to the nation on April 30th 1973 during the Watergate scandal when he proclaimed “there can be no Whitewash at the White House” there is definitely whitewash at our house.
Having looked up the recipe for making whitewash with hydrated lime (thanks YouTube) and fortunately having a huge sack of it for making cement ring cones and other such concrete niceties (available through our Esty shop once we have the finish we’re after) we’ve slapped on the first coat. As we have blogged before, it would have been great to have kept the bare brick and stone as stripping things back to their raw state is part of our ethos at Estuary Home. However, the cement is too dirty and the brick is still permeated by yellow soot/sap/mysterious ooze and so we’re going white.
The second-hand paint was bought for £3.50 (2.5L white satinwood) from Reciprocal which is sadly closing down. Hopefully we’ll come across another organisation trying to keep good quality paint in use. It does mean that we’re now making the Estuary Home room a white interior. The saving grace is perhaps the floor, which, now sanded, is going to have the Estuary Home aging treatment to make it silver-grey or dark and keep the room weathered and rustic looking.
Having said that, we do have a tin of lime-effect wax and so the room may become completely white.
We’ve not decided what to do with the unattractive electric heater. Being off-grid when it come to the gas supply means it’s a balance between getting the right look, being energy efficient and sustainable and having a hygge home
The stairwell bookcases have been designed and will be made from the scaffold planks which we had earmarked as bath trays but when you’re taking reclaimed materials and making them into great things it’s good to see where it takes you. We’ll put this down to R&D and hope it produces something fab.
Only 3-4 days drying time to wait and we can have another go at the whitewash.
