The barn is dark inside. It has windows, and I usually have the door open, but still, it’s quite dingy in there.
So today, after converting two sheep stalls into one larger cow stall, I decided to experiment with whitewash. We had bought a bag of lime some time ago, which I used to help dry out the soggy ground in the barn intermittently, and I thought … hey, what about whitewash?
Mix the lime with some water and add a bit of salt, paint it on the walls, ignore the fact that it looks like it’s barely covering the surface and just keep painting … and voila! White walls!
The stuff comes off like dust for the first little while … I hear it needs to cure for a day or two (and even then it’ll flake off a bit with rubbing, but hey, lighter is better!). I covered all the gates, the pen walls, the interior barn walls, everything but the ceiling (which would be nice to have done as well .. maybe next year). It was a messy job, but it looks so much better in there! I will go out and test it tomorrow and see how it’s sticking.
I also installed the head gate, which I got as part of the milking machine barter deal a few weeks back: I painted it with some rust-covering paint, and hung it up in the milking stanchion. I had it in there yesterday, actually, and Sasha didn’t mind it at all, so I am very pleased.
This picture is kind of blurry, but it’s the only one I’ve got at the moment:
So yeah, after all that work my feet hurt and I’m very weary … I came in and had a shower, coated my feet and arms and back with Voltaren, and sat down to watch a movie (Inception – cool!) and knit. Now for some hefty sedatives and off to bed!
I went out and checked this morning: it is indeed curing up! I put it on too heavy in some places and those are still quite dusty but yesterday if you blew on it clouds of dust came up, today, you get a tiny bit of residue on your fingers and that is it. I read that the process actually turns the powder back into limestone: so you get a limestone coating over your wood, cool, eh?
ReplyDeleteIt needs more coats,but they can wait (and should wait until the first coat has lots of time to cure). I'm very excited to use an ancient - and really inexpensive - technique to brighten and clean the barn!
Cool!
ReplyDelete