Render Me Sandstone

It's something I have been meaning to do all school holidays. In fact it has needed doing since Dad died fourteen years ago. The entire side of the house, an addition to the original sandstone house, has needed to be rendered. There was some outline of the sandstone blocks but they were gray in colour and the mortar between the blocks was sloppy and unsightly.

I got out there yesterday and began, full of steam. I felt very connected to Dad because this may have been one of his last projects. I worked away with my bucket of sandstone coloured cement, cold chisel and 'No Frills' washing up gloves.

The procedure went something like this: Mix a batch of architectural cement and add colour to taste (?) then throw in a slurp of Cem-stick (to keep it on the wall). Scrub the block in question with a rough dry scrubbing brush to get rid of cobwebs the chisel all around the edges to make it smooth and stone block shaped. Use a hammer if needed. Take a handful of cement mixture and rub all over the entire block thoroughly. Smooth the edges with fingertip and gently graze off excess from surface. Make sure blocks below are clean of drips. Assess the job you have done and decide if you like it. If you don't there is not much you can do. Move onto the next block. Remember, once all this is done the cracks between the blocks will need to be coloured a believable mortar colour (not dark gray)

It took me three hours of kneeling and reaching, knocking dags off the blocks and into my eyes and two pairs of rubber gloves. By the time I called it a day I was exhausted and dirty with a very damaged right hand. The gloves had torn (twice) and let the cement mixture seep in and burn my skin.

Day two did not begin with such optimism. I was filthy with Dad for not getting it done properly in the first place. I'm sure it's not right to be so angry with someone who can't defend themselves, but I couldn't help it. This house is a project that has been going on for twenty-five years this year and I'm sure it should have been done by now.

In any case, there was no avoiding the giant gray wall that stood before me. I had to tackle it; burnt hand or no. It was tougher the second day because I was having trouble telling which blocks I had done and which I hadn't. It was then that I realised some had been done a really long time ago. They were still all sloppy around the edges, but in the middle there was definitely sandstone looking stuff there. Hurrah! Dad had done the work - it just seemed that in time his work had washed away and all that remained were the blocks that had been protected from the weather.

I rallied at that thought and got half of the long side of the wall done. I found industrial gloves so my hands had to bare no further damage and I found that we had a whole range of colours to play with. Once I had finished for the day I stepped back and looked at it. I had been finding myself getting fixated with detail and wasn't really liking what I was creating. However, from a distance it looked pretty good.

Mum came outside and gave ma a pat on the back.
"Good job. Now you just have to put up with people admiring it."

And I have to finish the rest of it.