Thread: My Machinery Shed WIP - a bit different!

Hi Rickey

Thanks for sharing such an interest journey with us; I've just read the complete WIP story - there's nothing more magic than a mudbrick dwelling.

Keep on enjoying the good life.

cheers.
Ray

As state above I am really enjoying this journey. I know there is a little bit more but one step at a time.

Nothing done on the shed. Was staining the windows for the house - did that for a week and have ended up with a prolapsed disc in back and very, very bad sciatica. Been on the couch for a week and slowly getting better. Pretty sure an hour and a half drive up the mountain wouldn't do it much good.

Will commence light duties on Monday if I feel up to it. 20 doors to stain and top coat. 4 coats overall. (french doors plus fly wire doors).

Feeling better after a bit of Cassilis Estate chardonnay.

Will keep you posted on the shed.
Rickey

A bit more progress after a couple of weekends off. The back is feeling better and I have now finished painting the windows and doors for the guest wing of the house.

Will keep working on the shed slowly over the next few months as our focus shifts to the guest wing. (slab down!!)

Rendering the inside of the back wall with lime render.

I apply the render with a steel float and then once it goes off a bit I go over it with a wooden float in a circular motion to flatten and smooth the render. Had the floodlight on here as it gets a bit dark in the back corner. One of the reasons for the render is that it lightens things up a bit.
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Rendering the bricks above the tyre section
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Enough done for this trip
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David squaring up the back corner using mud over aviary wire.
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Took an hour off and had a look around the King Cassilis Gold Mine. Lots of relics scattered around.
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I see a 'Blitz' Monkey Nose Cab there !!! (CMP Canadian Military Pattern) very rare now.

Well done on the shed.

Greg

I have loved reading this thread,that is an incredible job you guys have done and its looking great,,great read and great work

Mick!!!

Thanks Mick and Greg. We've enjoyed building it. A lot of what we are doing is practice for the house. Rendered stud wall, lime render, geo fab, bitumen paint etc. We were going to do rammed tyres for our guest wing but after doing the shed we've decided it's physically just too hard and there were issues around the engineering. The back wall of the guest wing will be retaining 3.4 metres of earth and the engineer wasn't confident of a solution using tyres.

Regards
Rickey

Haven't been up the mountain for a couple of weeks but have been doing a bit at home.

Got the brick press serviced the other day. There was a leak in the hydraulics that was getting worse and the bolts that hold the ram in place had stretched that much there was no thread left to tighten them up. All fixed now. Good to know that it's in good knick as we will shortly start making bricks for the house.

Made a brick out of sawdust and paper mache, 2/3 sawdust, 1/3 paper. Will dry it out and see how it burns on the fire. More a bit of fun than anything. We are going to try adding sawdust to the earth bricks to see what insulation value we can add to the bricks.

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Nearly finished the kitchen unit for the cabin. Door panels and drawer fronts use the same laminate flooring that we used for the ceiling. The door frames are recycled oregon that was saved when we re-did the deck. The rest of it is recycled pallet timber.

Probably looks a bit better than it actually is but should do the job.
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Drawers are dovetailed on all corners as practice for when I do the cabinetry in the house. Overkill but I would rather practice on recycled pine than expensive hardwood. Drawers came out OK and I learnt a bit doing them. I find that if I have the joints too tight, if there is any misalignment then the drawer ends up be skewed when clamped. If I make the joints a bit slacker then all is good. Polyurethane glue is a wonderful thing.
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Stay warm

Rickey

It's been a while so a quick update. The cabin is virtually completed. The kitchen cupboards made from recycle material is now in place. It's amazing the difference it makes when cutlery and crockery are in drawers instead of boxes. Bought a cheap 12 volt TV the other day and have a supply of DVDs.

Work is progressing on the guest wing of the house so I've been staying up there for a week at a time. Staying in the cabin certainly makes things a bit more bearable during winter.

Icicles on the tool box that I left on the truck overnight:

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The kitchen cupboard:

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Regards
Rickey

Thank you for the update, I have missed this for a little while.

Kudos to you Ricky - the entire thread is an impressive read!

I do love hard work, why - I can sit and watch it for hours!

If the house is up to the standard of the machinery shed and cabin - it will really be something!.

Well done sir.

Cheers

Noice

Thanks fellows - good to know people are still interested.

Just back from a couple of nights up there. Was meant to have the brickie up there this week but due to a misadventure with a deer last trip he was a scratching (had to get his ute fixed). They are a real nuisance at the moment; eating the newer growth on the apples and pears and rubbing their antlers on anything they can find. Also very disconcerting when it's pitch black and you are on the phone to your wife and you get a honk from a stag at very close range. Loud enough for Debra to hear it over the phone.

Trying to get the shed ready for a 'certificate of completion' in the next month or two. Boxed in above the back window on the outside. Covered it with builder's paper and aviary mesh and then rendered it with around 20mm of sand and lime render. No photo of the render but will get one at the weekend.

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Also experimented with adding sawdust to the clay to see how much I can add to the bricks and still have them hold together. The right 2 bricks are 1/3 sawdust and 2/3 clay. The front 1 is 50/50.

The 1/3 sawdust ones look pretty good and will hold together when dry. I did make another with 5% cement and that pressed really well. The 50/50 ones are a bit fragile and the 1 with cement actually disintegrated when I was carrying it to the pallet. Will be interesting to see how they dry. All about R value in case you were wondering why.
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Regards
Rickey

Makes me wonder if the original straw in mud bricks wasn't also partly for R values - only the neanderthal's never realized that factor!

With the deer, (I farmed deer for 20 years), it might help to think that in countrys where deer exist - they have interacted with orchards for millennia - eating windfallen fruit etc and also rubbing antlers on stems and so on.

We in Oz tend top think anything not native is a pest and should be shot trapped poisoned killed and is feral.

Many in this country, will literally KILl for the chance to bag a deer and put it in the freezer - if your going to make wine, apple cider etc - well a little smoked venison ham on a anti pasto platter of a summer with a chilled white wine, simply can't be beat!

So it costs you a few apples - the deer have to eat and you'd only sell the apples by the truckload to buy some smoked venison ham at $45 - $60 a kilo!

I used to buy all the windfallen apples from my local orchardist to feed to my deer every week, because fruit trees with their deep root system bring up a lot of trace element minerals etc essential to animal health from the deep soil profile and put them into the fruit!. These trace elements have long since been leched out of the pasture root zone so livestock can't get them from eating grass in many cases.

Likewise with the anlter rubbing - they do it (only the males) for about 4 weeks tops... and only one male in a large area that he marks his territory and defends from other males quite vigorously...

How much "damage' can one Male do to a whole orchard of trees in 4 weeks? Really speaking youd only pay someone to tip prune the new wood on those trees branches anyway and the deers doing it for free!

Its "looks" a loit worse than t really is - it doesn't kill the tree and is natures way of pruning them!

Learning to live with nature on the land takes a lot of change in our mindset - but life gets a lot easier and more enjoyable when you learn to go along with nature rather than try and master it, to OUR way of doing things.

That's my observation after 20 years of farming (including the deer)...(and another 8years of forestry/wildlife work).

One mans trash is another mans treasure just as one mans pest is another mans livestock.

Its all in the mind....

Not much makes a little girls life more complete than a pet deer fawn! My now 25 year old daughter loved her pet deer "Rusty" all his 22 year life!

I think you have a lovely property there, and It will take the determination patience and hard work to transform the buildings etc to what you want and to establish your orchards vines etc and be set up to crush them and make the apple cider (and set up a hillbilly still ), but in terms of making the parrots and deer and roos and everything esle conform to your will - good luck - coz its a never ending battle that eventually you'll only ever lose.

Its much easier once you accept that nature will eventually have its way - every "job" that you create on the land "controlling nature" will be another rod for your back that you can never get away from.

If you allow it to - it will rob you of any enjoyment of your rural paradise - visitors will come and rave about the tranquilty and take pics a million, while you sit on the verandah thinking - "I really should be down poisoning that blackberry on the back fence. I really should be doing the fire breaks today - I really should be pulling those thistles, double gees, deadly nightshade (insert your weed of choice here) - while everyone else relaxes.

It's all about whether you own the farm or the farm owns you!

The deer are alright - you just haven't realized it yet!

What - You need a plumber? An advert on shooters forum will get you 3 plumbers for free all next weekend if they can shoot a deer of an evening! Likewise sparkys, carpenters etc etc....

Most trades have a contingent who like to shoot the occasional deer.

You have a very trade-able commodity.

Some would think about setting up a free feeder and some salt licks - to attract a few more.

I'm sure your getting the picture.

Its a pretty nice looking property......





That's from someone who had a pretty nice looking property in a previous life.