Low Rent Renaissance

Sliding door for access to crawlspace. Mostly recycled and re-purposed materials -- plywood from the mobile home we disassembled quite a while back, wheels & hardware from a piece of pull-behind lawn equipment, some new and some re-used wood...three 2x4s, two 1x4s, two 1x2s.   Back of the sliding door showing wheels in track. Latex cement screen panel will cover other side of the sliding door assembly. I was adding skirting to our deck/porch and wanted to try a large latex cement panel that would cover an entire 8 ft. section, which worked out okay. Coffee cans are in place to make two vents. Second or third coat of latex paint/sand & cement mixture. Another access door. This one for under the deck, where Julio lives. Julio.

Finished section of latex cement skirting made from "recycled" window screens. Just a couple notes about this process. It's important to place the frames so that the screen lays flat on the plastic (i.e. the front of the frame facing up, spline down, and then to leave them in place while the mix dries/cures. I leave mine in place for all three initial coats. They are still slightly flexible when I take them from the plastic and I handle with care. After the final coat cures, they'll be very sturdy. For the initial coat, I put approximately 32 ounces of water and the same amount of paint in a bucket. I use an electric drill with a paint-mixing paddle attached, and add Portland cement from a two pound coffee can. It usually takes the whole can to mix to the approximate consistency of pancake batter for the initial coat. I dry-mix three parts sand with one part Portland cement, using a 2 pound coffee can for measure. I tumble it in my cement mixer, then sc...

My homemade mortar sprayer has been working well for my experiments with burlap-crete.(  http://papercreteparadise.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-low-rent-mortar-sprayer.html )  However, when I tried to replace the air gun with one (I thought was) just like it, I found that the threads of the coupler inside the PVC fitting were too short to engage those on the air gun. Though both were purchased at Harbor Freight, the air guns were slightly different. Which means not every air gun will work in this system without some additional retrofitting. I had to grind away some of the thickness of the PVC with a Dremel tool, and also cut the little curled ring off the new air gun to make it work. Also, I’d used a Clorox bottle at first because I happened to have one. A gallon Concrete Bonding Agent jug is sturdier and is a tighter fit.

I finished coating the roof. The final mixture was one part cement to two parts of aggregate, plus asphalt emulsion. So each batch included four parts sand, two of cellulose insulation, three of cement. It was easiest, after the dry ingredients tumbled awhile in the mixer, to rake some into a large plastic bowl, add water, and mix by hand (rather than in a bucket with the drill), then add the asphalt emulsion. I would just scoop some asphalt emulsion -- maybe two handfuls --out of the bucket into the bowl of damp mix and knead it until it was evenly distributed. I daubed the stuff on. Thin coats work best. It was pleasant to work with. I used a broken CD as a tool to created the thatched look. The crete lightens as it cures.

Continuing work on the "thatched" roof using an asphalt emulsion mix. Experimenting with staining a couple of efforts at faux bois planters. I've thus far experimented with a commercial dye called Smith's Color Floor, a manganese carbonate/potassium dichromate mixture (I didn't enjoy using this so much because of potential toxicity), and iron and zinc oxide. No need to include muriatic acid in a mix of water and iron or zinc oxide. The oxide stains the concrete without acid. I'm unhappy with the finished product but feel like it's a start. Next plan is to make some "patties" from my mortar mix as described by the great Donald Tucker so that I can practice mixing the various colors of oxide, etc. A great starting point for infomation related to using oxides and other fairly inexpensive substances to stain concrete is here: http://www.stainedfloor.com/ . I purchased my chemicals from various sellers on Ebay. The small pot is made over a b...

This so-called gazebo structure is an amalgam of papercrete recipes. In that way it taught me a good bit about papercrete -- the recipes improved over the weeks of layering. But some of the areas first covered are soft, and rain was actually eroding them. I wanted to extend the umbrella roof, creating an eave for aesthetics but also to help keep the rain off those soft sections until I can invest the time to save or re-do them. The roof is made from a picnic table umbrella coated with a latex paint/cement/sand mixture. It seems to be holding up, but I didn’t see how to attach lathe or hardware cloth as an armature for an eave. I wound up using raw burlap soaked in bonding agent, then saturated with crack resistant grout. I was inspired to try this approach by this great website ( http://annesley.wordpress.com/burlap-crete-explained/ ). I could not find the rapid set grout this author writes about, and settled for Quickrete Professional Crack Resistant Grout purchased ...