In the background is the first spray coat on the south wall of the kitchen. In the foreground we have the south wall of the lounge room with its freshly applied second spray coat. It's amazing how the second coat, with basic floating, can make a really rough looking wall develop a nice base plane. You can suddenly see how the wall is going to look with its top coat.
The lounge window has been masked with clear plastic. Saves clean up on the glass and frame. |
The first coat on these walls had been applied by hand. The second coat was applied with the sprayer, and went on really smoothly. The first coat was quite flat, so that assisted the follow up coat. The float coat should be quite simple.
Note - Spring has sprung, and it's time to find the mower! |
Part of the process is timelining - what goes in before what. So what we have here is a colourbond ceiling that went in AFTER the electrician did the prelay, particularly the roof cavity, but before the second coat of render went on. The first coat had already been sprayed. Bit of a juggle but that's the way it's got to be.The colourbond ceiling was chosen for it's ease of installation, the fact that it spans 1200mm instead of gyprock's 600mm, the fix-and-forget (no flushing, sanding and three coats of paint!), and that it acts as a stop to the wall render, thus eliminating cornice. So with the absence of cornice, skirting and door and window architraves, fitting out becomes almost non-existant. |
As mentioned above, you really want to get your wiring prelaid before rendering. In this case, we chased a channel into the first coat for the sub-panel. As we still didn't know quite how the wiring was going to transpire, we rendered anyway on the basis that we could retrofit. The conduit will be overlaid with chicken wire and then spray rendered.It is a good idea to get your sparky in before or as you start to render. He will save you (and himself!) a lot of time and effort, and point out things that need to be done that you may have missed. Like - where does the TV aerial cable come in? Oops, hadn't thought of that!! So in goes another length of conduit. |
This is an example of where the render was applied before electrical prelay, but leaving exposed straw for conduit and power point boxes. The boxes themselves are screwed to wooden wedges driven into the bale wall. The conduit is pinned to the bales with wire staples. The boxes need to sit flush with the final float coat, but they can be jiggled about to suit as you go. The render will fix them in place, so that can be done with a hand trowel.The conduit will be covered with small bird wire, and as the spray renderer allows feathering at the edges, the risk of differential cracking is eliminated. |