Janine and I have been particularly busy today cleaning up the brickwork left as it was by our wonderful brickies, Gordon and Bill after they finished up their 4 day week on Thursday. They got the verandah wall all done, right up to the roof. That only leaves the top of the gable wall to be completed. If anyone needs a couple of very skilled and experienced brick layers to do a great job, contact me and I’ll pass their details. They only work a 4 day week, as with them both being well over 70, they can do that. We don’t want to wear them out.

What was particularly good about their working style is the number of times that they asked me what I wanted done here or there. What was I expecting. What did I think about this problem… How should the Sussex bond variation be interpreted and implemented here? etc etc. They’re always consulting and prepared to be flexible. Although I’m very tired from being the brickies labourer to two brickies. Constantly on the go, making mortar, or cutting special shapes on the brick saw, but mostly passing mud and bricks up onto the scaffold, I’m really glad the end of the day, and particularly now that this wall section is complete. We can stand back and appreciate the final ‘look’ of the project so far. And it looks great! Better than I imagined 12 months ago when I drew up the plans and started to get quotes on this crazy idea of buying 5 different ‘off-the-plan’ kit-form farm sheds of all different sizes, heights and shapes, and then bolting tham all together, to make something a little bit different and more interesting. It’s worked!

Today is Good Friday and everything is closed for some obscure ancient pagan reason, so we are working hard at home as usual. As the brickies have finished the verandah wall, we can start to fettle it and begin to wash it down with dilute hydrochloric acid and scrubbing brushes. I’m using a 0.5 norm muriatic acid from a big hardware chain. I’m diluting it to a 10% titration just strong enough to react with the lime in the mortar to dissolve the white ‘blush’ and occasional streak of smeared excess mortar from the brick face, but not strong enough to cause any damage to our skin if spilt. We are wearing long rubber work gloves and goggles, just in case.

We spent most of the day from 9.00 am to 7.00 pm. on the cleaning of the wall. We first went over the entire wall, every brick, brick by brick, scrubbing it down with acid, then follow this up with another going over with the water blaster gadget. The wall looks better, but not quite good enough or clean enough. There were still a few smudges here and there when we came back from lunch and got a fresh look at the surface.

We decide to go over it again with the dilute acid wash and scrubbing brushes. We follow this up again with the high pressure water blaster. Our supposedly, high pressure, water blaster is just a toy, We bought it very cheaply over 20 years ago and have hardly used it, as it’s not very powerful, but it does blow off just enough of the lime gunge without damaging any of the bricks or the environment. It turns out to be just perfect for this job. I wish that I had owned it 35 years ago when I had to wash all the brick work on the old school extension. I did all of that acid scrub and water rinse off by hand from buckets carried up onto the scaffold. It’s amazing how fast a bucket of water can get emptied by hand using a sponge. I spent more time climbing up and down the scaffold, than I did washing bricks.

But that was then and this is now. We have just had a massive down pour of rain last week, so we have an excess of water in the dams, as they are still over-flowing with the seepage from the saturated soil. So water supply is no problem for us this week. I can leave the pump on for an hour while I wash everything. The electric pump runs directly off the solar panels, it’s a sunny day, so we are just using up some of our excess solar-electric power as well.

The water is over-flowing from the dam, so If I don’t use it up in this way, it just flows out of the dam and out into the already saturated soil farther down the hill and into the ‘key-line’ system of dams that we have built over our 45 years years of living here. The water flows from one dam down into the next. We have 4 dams on the property, before the water leaves us and flows down the hill and into our neighbours dam.

We did the second acid scrub and water blast rinse, then stood back and had a good overall look. It looked better and was worth the extra few hours of work. Once the bricks were cleaned, it was time to dismantle the scaffolding piece by piece, removing all the planks and ply sheeting and stacking them all away for re-use again later. The planks and ply will be used as bench tops and tables in the pottery in a few months time when we get to that stage. They were 2nd hand when we got them given to us, as they came from a house that was demolished in Tahmoor. We had to de-nail them before we could use them as scaffolding, they will need to be heavily cleaned to remove all the spilt lime mortar before they can be used again. I will have to wash them and scrub them to remove all the sand before I can plane the surface without damaging the planer blades.

Once all the steel scaffold frames were removed and stacked on the ute, we could remove the plastic sheeting that I had stapled onto the timber windows to keep them clean. Only then could we get to see the outcome. The wall looks great. The Sussex brick bond variation that Gordon and Bill have created for us looks perfectly matched to the Old School building. It also matches the tone and hue of the old rusted galvanised iron sheeting that I used on the wall above the verandah.

I used almost 4 litres of acid to get this wall cleaned. I can see that I’ll use another 4 litres on the gable wall next week when that wall gets finished.

I’m starting to get a bit excited now as things are beginning to come together. The rest of this long weekend will be spent in the garden as everything is growing it’s head off and has been left somewhat neglected for a while now.