Papercrete 2
October 25, 2009
Hello Everyone:
Well, it’s time for an update on the papercrete house. As has been the case for months, I have not spent much time on the computer, mostly because I am working so much on the guest house. Progress is actually coming along pretty fast, although at this point I am itching to get it all done so that I can actually move. The plan has been to do so by February or March, and it seems to be on track.
I’ve been working on the place for between four and six days a week for all of October, which is more or less since I returned from South Africa at the end of September. I’m continually improving my skills at the papercreting process, and the results are quite pleasing to my eye. The walls in most of the house are about 7 feet high right now, and I hope to be ready to put the roof on in another two weeks or so. The final wall height inside the house will be 8.5 feet, after which I will place the large wooden beams down and get the roof laid on them.
I got a creative idea a few weeks ago while building the walls. I thought that it might be nice to mix colored paint with the wet papercrete mix, and create layers of color in the walls. So I went to the Route 66 Swap Meet up in Kingman, and bought 45 gallons of cheap, discounted latex and acrylic paint in various bright colors. I started mixing the paint up into the papercrete, which stains the entire batch a pale version of whatever color I used. Then I make the papercrete into different mountain-looking shapes, and pour another layer over and around it to look like sky, clouds, etc.
This was obviously a total experiment, and I was not sure of how this would turn out, or whether I would really like the results. However, I figured that it was worth a try, and that if I didn’t like it I could always cover it over with plaster or stucco to finish off the wall and hide it if need be. But it turns out that I do like it, and it looks really interesting. I’m still working out how to stop the colors from running and bleeding together when the mix is still very wet, but I believe that I can figure out ways to control that problem when I do the main house. I will probably work on more complicated designs in the main home, and maybe I’ll be also able to work more slowly in order to allow the wet papercrete to dry more between colored layers, which will help prevent as much bleeding.
In any case, I’ve looked online fairly thoroughly, and since I haven’t seen anyone else doing so-called “paintcrete” it appears likely that I am the first. I took a bunch of videos and photos of the process I went through, and someday I will post the videos on YouTube and create a website about the house and the papercrete building process to help educate people. For now, however, I will attach a few photos so that you can see what I am talking about….
In photos 1 through 4 below, you can see how I added some rocks, coral, and other items that I’ve collected over the years into the walls. I embed them into the wet papercrete mix while it’s still mushy and easy to position them against the form. Then I let the walls drain off excess water overnight, and take the forms off the next morning to expose the items within. I need to spend a little time scraping away damp papercrete to expose the rocks and making sure the edges are smooth and not ragged; but after a few days of drying they are pretty firmly locked into the papercrete matrix and they shouldn’t fall out too easily, although if you want to pry them out with a screwdriver or something you easily can. The rocks and corals shown here came from Baja California, Mexico in 2003, when I went on the science expedition with the San Diego Natural History Museum. I think I will call this my “Baja Room” when it comes time to rent them out to future guests in another few years.
In photos 5 and 6, I show what I will be calling my “South Africa Room”. In it, I was trying to sort of duplicate some of the colors of the South African flag, by making layers of blue, green, yellow, and red. (I skipped the black, which would not look nice in this case. J) The colors in my wall are not very bright, partly because they got diluted in the papercrete, and partly because the walls are still wet in this photo. They should lighten up and brighten some as the walls dry out over the next few weeks.
I also added rocks and some other items I collected on my recent trip into the walls, but I didn’t take any good photos of them embedded into the walls for the time being. But they are there, and in the walls of this room are embedded pieces of quartz from the Knersvlakte (an incredible area of succulents growing in extensive fields of white quartz pebbles), Namibian ironwood and colored stones given to me by the owner of a guest house we stayed at one night, a pair of sheep horns I found on a botanical hike near the coast one day, and a couple of enormous acacia thorns that I received from the owner of a nature reserve we visited near Calitzdorp. So in between those collected items and the layers of “paintcrete” in the walls to evoke the colors of the South African flag, I have memorialized my first trip to South Africa in an unusual way. How artsy I am.
This last photo, number 7, shows the place where I stopped pouring the papercrete and shaped the yellow-stained layer above the red, blue, and green into “mountains”. The walls are a little over 7 feet tall right here, and I still need to do about 15 more inches to get them finished and ready for the roof. I’ll probably make a paler blue layer to resemble sky above the mountains and then it will be time for the roof beams. After that, the papercrete roof can go on and the doors and windows can be installed. And after THAT, I hope that I can get all of the other things I need for a civilized life into the place before I run out of money. I’m spending a lot but not earning much, since I am really trying to get this done. But it’s going OK – so far, so good.
Well, that’s the domestic update. It’s been a very nice October here, fairly warm and dry and good for working outside. I do wish we would get some rain, because the summer monsoon season was a bust and we got almost no rainfall over the summer like we usually do. A normal summer would see about 3 inches of rain in July and August; but I got under a half-inch at D:FR, and even that paltry sum was spread out over three storms, so it really didn’t amount to anything worthwhile. Therefore it’s very dry this fall. But there’s some hope for this winter – apparently there is an El Niño weather pattern in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and that usually means more rain and warmer winter weather than normal in Arizona, so I hope that this will prove true. (Notation, March 1, 2010: Although it did remain dry throughout November 2009, from December 2009 to February 2010 D:FR received over 5 inches of rainfall, which did help rehydrate the ecosystem and to recharge the water-harvesting basins that capture flood runoff.)
I’ll have to send some photos of the South Africa trip, but it will be hard to choose which one of the 3200-odd photos I should edit it down to. I guess I’ll get it figured out eventually….
Hope that everyone is well. Take care, and Happy Halloween!
Jan
