Stopping our minds from wandering

Autumn has come in a flurry of leaves, reminding us that winter is around the corner. With an endless list of projects, we are slowly picking away at them. It is the story of our restoration of Towerwater, one can have the money or the time but seldom both at the same time.

Covid gave us the perfect opportunity to tackle the outstanding issues, but once again when we had the time, our finances were elsewhere committed. Sometimes serious issues like the refreshing of thatch roofs cannot wait for the right time. We decided to get a local thatcher from Montagu to do the maintenance. As part of the roof maintenance project, Keith decided to tackle the corrugated iron roof on the flat-roof section himself. 

Putting up scaffolding, exterior lime washing complete, hearth detail

Cleaning, preparing, and covering the iron roof with an eco-rubber treatment will hopefully see us through a dry winter inside the house. It was important to start with the roofs because we decided to refinish the inside of the house as well.

The freshly lime washed exterior of the main house.

The problem with home maintenance is that it seems very easy as one plans the schedule of work. The reality is that one can never foresee all the delays, stretching the project from weeks to months. By the middle of autumn, we at least completed the roofs, limewashed the cottage inside and out, and limewashed the outside of the main house and garden walls.

Busy treating the double doors to the dining room with wood protector.

Being caught up in the maintenance of the property meant that my creativity was focused on painting woodwork and preparing spaces to be painted. Writing the blog was put on the backburner. I could not allow my mind from wandering away from the task at hand.

A bedroom used to store the books from the library.

It reminded me of the Beatles song, ‘Fixing a Hole’ with the lyrics – “I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering”, “I'm filling the cracks that ran through the door and kept my mind from wandering”, “I'm taking the time for a number of things that weren't important yesterday”.

Emptying the bedroom, dining room and library/lounge for painting/lime washing.

We are taking the time to attend to all the outstanding issues and going at it, room by room. Although the progress is slower than what we would have liked, all the maintenance work certainly kept our minds from wandering.

Reflections of Limewash

With the thatch roofs of the Towerwater buildings being serviced, it was the perfect opportunity to use the support structures on the roof to maintain the lime plaster roof ridging. Keith mixed lime plaster comprising sand, lime, and Portland cement in the original ratio of 8:2:1 and the thatchers repaired the roof ridging while they were on the roof.

Fungai took the opportunity to lime wash the roof ridging when the plaster work was dry and cured. His task was made easier with the roof supports tied through the thatch to the roof structure. Watching him lime wash the roof, and gable ridging was quite hair raising.

Keith painted the entrance gates, pickets, and the doors of the main house while Fungai limewashed the garden walls, pillars as well as the walls of the buildings.

A limewashed wall seems whiter than any other white paint can achieve. Reading up on limewash, I came across a very interesting description that may explain the reason. Limewash is a mixture of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) in water which sets slowly by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. This chemical reaction produces crystals of calcite (calcium carbonate). The crystals have a dual refractive index, meaning that the light entering each crystal is reflected in duplicate. This results in the characteristic surface glow of limewashed surfaces. This is not found in other decorative finishes.

Limewash was not used for primarily for its decorative purposes, but it was a treatment intended to protect early mud structures against the worst weather. Limewash allows a building to breathe, and that is very important when a building is built with mud or sunbaked bricks, as in the case of the Towerwater buildings. Moisture can move freely in and out of the bricks preventing the moisture from becoming trapped in the bricks and causing their decay and that of the masonry. Limewash also serves as cleansing agent and basically sterilizes the walls.

The freshly limewashed buildings of Towerwater is blinding in the Karoo sun. Looking at the brilliant beauty of the white walls, I was reminded of the coating of dual reflective crystals on the walls. Luckily, the pebbled plaster finish on the walls softens the glare by reflecting the bright sunlight in thousands of different directions.

The property looks fresh and manicured and the engraved name stands out against the white of the gate pillar, Towerwater aan de Breede. For now the enchantment of the limewashed buildings nestling among the green of the garden match the enchantment of the canal and the garden it feeds.

Other posts about limewash at Towerwater

Thatch roof maintenance and summer rains

Vernacular building skills and plaster mixes

Details of a lime-washed room

The Line of Beauty

Thatch roof maintenance and summer rains

A reed thatch roof, like any other roof, needs to be maintained regularly to last as long as possible. The maintenance of the buildings was planned for November this year. This maintenance includes the combing of the thatch roofs, limewashing the buildings, painting of the pickets, and limewashing the garden walls and pillars.

Keith attended to the maintenance of the corrugated iron flat-roof section over the lounge, library, and bathrooms earlier this year. No leaks experienced during the unseasonal rain showers in October and November confirmed that he did a good job of waterproofing the roof.

Unfortunately, the same unseasonal downpours in November prevented the local thatcher from the nearby town of Montagu from attending to the thatch roofs uninterrupted.

The cottage thatch roof before maintenance

The same thatcher that installed the cottage roof in 1997 undertook the maintenance of both roofs. With his two sons now helping their father, it is the third generation of thatcher’s that learnt their skill from one of the renowned thatchers of Elim in the south-western Cape.

Different stages of thatch maintenance on the main roof

The roof of the main house was restored by Dal Josaphat Restoration in 2007. They undertook a careful reconstruction of the roof structure carefully following the traditional vernacular construction methodology of buildings of this date and region. Apart from roof timbering techniques changing over the centuries, regional practices made for different roof structures in different regions. In the case of Towerwater, the most obvious regional features are characterised by the fairly low pitch and squat wide dormers on the main house. The reconstruction therefore ensured a roof that was historically correct to the age and location of the homestead.

The maintenance of the thatch roof involved combing, compacting, and the removal of any mouldy thatch. Combing the roof was done by hand using a stiff bunch of thatch that was also used to compact the thatch before smoothing it with a leggett.

A leggett and fresh thatch

The ends of the thatch that forms the outer layer of the roof, slowly deteriorate from exposure to the elements. Combing or brushing is the process of removing the outer layer of thatch from the entire surface of the roof. Combing or brushing prolongs the life of the thatch roof. The weather damaged outer layer of the thatch roof retains moisture that will penetrate deeper and deeper into the thatch if it is not regularly combed.

Brushing the outer layer of the thatch before compacting it

Brushing and compacting the thatch helps ensure that the surface is of the roof is smooth and compact, allowing rainwater to run off efficiently and the roof to dry quicker.

Using the leggett after adding new thatch to the roof

Outer logs are tied to the inside structure of the roof to form steps which support the thatcher’s as they comb and compact the roof. The activity of the roof being combed and compacted, transported one back to an era of craftsmen and a way of life that the buildings on the property must have experienced routinely in their lifespan.

The art of thatching has not escaped modernisation. The quiet trimming of thatch bundles to the correct length for use in compacting the roof, has now been replaced with an electric hedge trimmer. Instead of cutting one bundle at a time, several bundles can be prepared simultaneously for the workmen on the roof. The work was done faster and with less effort, but it has diminished the charm of watching the skill of craftsmen slicing through the bundles of thatch with a spar knife or sickle.

Chatting to Sammy Botha, the thatcher, I was sad to learn that the opportunity of work for his company is becoming less and less owing to more people replacing the thatch roofs of their houses with corrugated iron or other material. With the decline in demand for their skills, more and more young people in fifth, fourth, and third generation thatchers are choosing not to continue with this skill. It is sad to see this happen. One can only wonder what the future will hold for the buildings at Towerwater should local thatchers no longer be available.

The phenomenon of thatch roofs being replaced with corrugated iron is nothing new. I am reminded of a comment in Hilda’s Diary of a Cape Housekeeper by Hildagonda Duckitt published in 1902. On page 31 she writes, “The old style of building was admirably suited to this climate, the part in which the family lived being mostly on the ground-floor, the thatched roofs, so cool in summer and warm in winter, were very picturesque, with their ornamental gable-ends. All about Stellenbosch, French Hoek, and Ceres, these pretty homesteads still abound. Mrs. Trotter’s book. Old Colonial Houses (published by Batsford), gives many beautiful specimens, but I am sorry to say that, owing to a very high rate of insurance for reed-thatched houses, the ugly corrugated iron roof is put on whenever the thatch has become too old to repair, though a reed thatch will last about forty or fifty years if carefully attended to.”

I suppose we were swimming against the tide when we removed the corrugated iron roofs of the Towerwater buildings to restore the thatch the building once had. Apart from being beautiful, the old thatch roofs are practical and perfectly regulate the climatic extremes of a Karoo climate.

With the roofs looking fresh and new with their spots of lighter and new thatch, it was time to look at the limewashing of the garden walls and buildings.

Other posts about the thatch roofs at Towerwater

Reflections of Limewash

Vernacular crafts and thatch roof repairs

Restoring Cape Vernacular Architecture  – The Main house

The reality of dreams