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transition from cavelike
Saturday, October 27 2012
There are always a few more things that need doing in the nearly-finished greenhouse upstairs. Today I handled one of the most low-priority items: figuring out how to handle the transition between the roughly-finished ("cavelike") portland cement interior of the cantilevered catform and the smoothly-finished cantaloupe-painted drywall of the rest of the greenhouse upstairs. I decided to mix up the last of my increasingly-marginal portland cement supply and use that to fill in the gaps between the two surfaces. That portland cement had been sitting in an open bag in the garage for over a year and was now full of large chunks that had partially-set. I've found that working with it is best done with supplies normally reserved for use related to the bathroom habits of indoor felines. First I dump a bunch of it out into a dry cat litter box and then I use a litter scoop to remove the larger chunks (which I throw into the garden; they're an excellent source of calcium). Then I use a piece of two by four to hammer any remaining chunks into a fine powder. Finally, I mix it all with the water necessary to produce a paste with a peanut-butter-like consistency. I apply this to the surfaces where it will harden using a putty knife. Portland cement stucco applied this way must be sprayed periodically with water for the next day or two in order to set correctly.
Throughout the day I also continued work on my latest painting, the one showcasing a fanciful biologically-rich 20 acre planet. It is actually turning out better than expected, which (as I've noted before) always seems to happen so long as I manage to persevere through a painting's initial ugly phase.
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