Each Little World

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house stucco, Pt. 3

PART 3: ADDING COLOR AND CLEAN-UP

HE SAID: At the end of the last post I was applying the brown coat and doing test colors for the final coat on the outside.

In the picture above you can see that I've added another color over the first on my test panel. There are additional colors on the other side. The Quickcrete product I was using suggested adding one 10-oz bottle of pigment to one 80-lb bag of mix. To do my tests I would add 1/2-oz of color to 4-lbs of concrete mix if I wanted to test a straight color. My choices were buff, red, grey, terra cotta and brown. If I wanted to mix two colors I'd divide the 1/2-oz of color proportionally. I borrowed the kitchen scale and a set of measuring spoons to keep the proportions accurate.

However, despite all my charts and careful calculations I still managed to screw up the first panel I did. In this picture you can clearly see the difference between the far right panel and the others. I had measured out tablespoons instead of ounces and ended up with a surface that showed more of the grey stucco mix. Fortunately Linda had reminded me to start at the back of the tea house where mistakes would show the least.

On the plus side, I decided that the "mistake" would make a good color choice for the interior of the tea house. It would be a softer, less intense color in the enclosed space.

The exterior finished at last! We were very please with the way it looked. The color was very much like a number of Japanese tea houses we had seen in our books. The texture of the surface had a pleasing, irregular, weathered look. That was partly due to a technique I used called a "heavy float." That involved using a rubber float or trowel over the surface while it was still a bit wet causing the sand in the mix to rise to the surface.

I was pretty tired by this time and toyed with the idea of closing the building up and waiting for Spring to finish the interior. But taking a day or two off renewed my enthusiasm. I also thought the interior would be easier. Silly me!

First of all, working with ladders, tools, and plastic sheeting in the restricted space made planning and clean-up all that much more difficult. And because there were structural elements inside that I had to work around, I found myself engaged in some fairly involved gymnastics to reach areas under the eaves. Although it was good working off of the level surface of the floor instead of the sloping landscape outside, I discovered a serious disadvantage. On the exterior, because I was standing below the bottom of the wall I was working on, I didn't have to bend very low to apply the stucco. On the interior I was applying it a couple inches from the floor. I hurt in new places after a day of working on the interior.

The tokonoma and storage area required stuccoing free standing panels framed by round timbers. They involved extra masking and care to follow the irregular edges. Also working in the confined spaces meant having to take special care not to mar newly-covered adjacent surfaces.

I mixed a warm grey for the color coat inside the tokonoma display area to set it apart from the rest of the interior space. This was also the only area of the building where I used a white stucco mix as apposed to the grey mix on the rest of the building. The white base gives color a little more intensity. (I hadn't ordered the white mix, but they sent me one bag by mistake. Another happy accident.)

This winter I plan to work on my designs for windows and doors. I also plan to look for someone with more skills and tools to help me with the cabinet work for the interior. The roof still needs copper for the ridge and I think I've found a good person to supply me with gutters. There is still a lot to do, but with the stucco finished the worst is behind us.

An account of this project wouldn't be complete without talking about clean-up and waste. Whenever I cleaned my tools I would store the wash water in 5-gallon buckets until the solids settled out and then re-use the clear water. As much as possible the clarified water I didn't need went on the garden. 

Used plastic sheeting, leveling boards, piles of masking tape, all added up every day. A lot of it could be thrown out with the normal weekly trash; but some things, like the 200-lb test panel, could not. It took more than a little effort with a heavy maul and wire cutters to break it into pieces I could handle.

The panel, concrete solids, as well as a number of other heavy items that had been accumulating in our yard all went in the truck to the the Dane County landfill. It cost $22.00 to dispose of 720-lbs of stuff. I still have a few tools to clean and put away, but I can look forward to winter with a real feeling of accomplishment this year.

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house stucco, Pt. 2

PART 2: TOOLS AND TECNIQUES

HE SAID:

Everything takes longer than you think it will. This seems to be a universal truth when it comes to projects, big or small. However, I've found that time spent preparing is always well worth it. "You Tube" proved to be a very useful source of information on the technique of stucco. And the Portland Cement Association provided me (for a price) a booklet called the "Portland Cement Plaster/Stucco Manual."

Another rule is that the right tools, and quality tools, will make the job a lot easier. The stucco manual provided me with a list of the tools I would need for the job: hawk, floats, scarifier, corner trowel, darby. I, of course, was unfamiliar with many of these tools and had no idea where to find them, but a short time with the yellow pages and $150.00 set me right up. The clerk at the construction materials company said he could find someone to help me if I got into trouble and wished me good luck.

I decided that another useful expenditure of time would be to do a test panel to hone my non-existent skills. In the picture above is the 2-foot by 5-foot wall section I built to practice on.

And here I am only looking like I know what I'm doing. The first thing I realized is that cement is heavy! The second bit of insight I gleaned is that applying stucco is not like brushing on paint. Not only is it hard to hold up ten pounds of stucco on a hawk for long periods, but it takes a lot of effort to force the mix into the lath hard enough to make it adhere to the wall.

While planning the project I thought of renting a cement mixer from Home Depot. You can rent it by the hour, day or week. Since I thought it would take more than a few days to complete the job I considered renting it for an entire week. Had I gone with that idea it would have been a financial disaster. As it turned out, even if someone had done all mixing for me, I physically couldn't apply more than four 80-pound bags a day — and I needed 50 bags to finish the job. Under the brown tarp above are 4000 lbs of stucco mix!

Having gathered tools and materials, practiced my technique, and screwed up my courage, I started on the tea house itself.

In this shot you may be able to see the stainless steel wire tie that I spoke of in the previous post — just below and to the left of the right side blue nail head. I also used screws along the edges (near the other nail) to hold the entire panel centered on the framing.

Here you can see the first coat of three, the "scratch coat," on the panel with the circular window. In order to make a tape mask prior to putting on the second or "brown coat" of stucco, I had to build a jig to locate the center of the window. Then, using a pencil and a rotating beam, I was able to establish a circular line around the frame of the window to stucco to.

After drawing the pencil line I cut the tape with a mat knife and peeled off the outside portion of the tape.

I could then stucco over the frame, up to the tape line, securing the window frame into the wall structure.

The stucco manual said that I should make sure the material cured slowly by keeping it moist. I did this by misting the surface periodically with a garden sprayer and also by covering it with plastic to keep the water from evaporating too quickly.

In the end it took about ten weeks to stucco the tea house, but much of that time was spent cleaning tools, hanging plastic sheeting, applying masking tape to protect the wood, and moving scaffolding necessary to reach the higher areas of the walls. I'm still a little amazed that, given my makeshift efforts to level my work platforms, I didn't fall off the narrow plank I spent so much time working on.

The sprayer I used to ensure slow curing.

In this shot you can see the exterior with its first coat complete. It was time to start thinking ahead to the third and final coat — the "finish coat" or color coat.

As I worked on the brown coat on the tea house I also started making color tests on the practice panel.This step proved to be extremely important. I only had five shades of colorant available to me and no idea how they would look when mixed with stucco. Also, the color when first applied looked nothing like the color of the coat once it was dried — which took a couple of days. 

My Garden Odyssey: Tea house update

SHE SAID: One of the benefits of creating a master plan for our garden is that there is always a project or two or ten waiting for us to tackle. Some can be done in an hour or an afternoon or are on-going for far longer than we ever imagined. Our back fence and gate took three years to build. On the other hand, it is gorgeous and has become a major feature of the garden and well worth the time, effort and money.

The fence from our neighbor's side (the gate is open and not visible).

Designing and building a Japanese-influenced tea house is the current long term project that Mark is engaged in. I am engaged in keeping up his spirtis when they flag, feeding him, and parking my car in the driveway instead of the garage which is a summer construction workshop. When I say "long term" I am talking seven years. You read that correctly: seven years! One of the great advantages of digital cameras and garden journals is that one can go back and see what you did when.

2005: Design the tea house structure, construct the foundation and the basic framework of the building.

2006: Add the roof and shingle it.

2007: Record rainy summer and exhaustion from the previous two summers meant no tea house work done. Instead Mark created a sloping gravel path from the Moon Garden to the West Gate. (Every area in the garden is named).

2008: I lost my job, we traveled to visit family and friends and Mark's mom moved from her little house on the Mississippi to Madison. We enjoyed the garden as a refuge and didn't do any extra projects!

2009: The pink insulation board walls of the tea house finally go up and its ultimate shape is much more obvious. Mark did a lot of work on the tea house in addition to converting the back garden paths from bark to gravel.

2010: Mark re-built the first stone wall he ever constructed which fell down at the end of the winter. And he worked with the contractor on a major interior re-modeling project.

2011: Mark retires and can garden full-time! First he replaces the front bark paths with gravel and then he begins the final work on the tea house. But I will let him tell you all about that himself.

For those who are interested, a complete description of constructing the foundation, the structural elements and roof can be found here. And Mark's explanation of putting up the Styrofoam walls and cutting windows and doing the interior structural work can be found here. You can also read posts about doing the back path, the front path and the remodeling.

To read the entire Odyssey of our gardens, click on My Garden Odyssey in the categories list.

The Little Pink House

HE SAID: After a hiatus of more than a year, I'm working on the tea house again. When I decided one day that the time had come, I wasn't even sure where I had left off. In looking things over, I found that there were several pieces of the frame that I had cut and pushed into their notches but never fastened in place.

View from our back deck.

Next I had to make some decisions about the Tokonoma, the traditional display alcove, and adjoining storage area. The concept is fairly simple, but the variations in versions I've seen in books are endless. I kept telling myself, whenever faced with choosing between options, to go with the simpler idea. I reasoned that following that rule would make things easier for the builder (me!) and result in a more harmonious structure overall.

The base of the Tokonoma.

Dividing the two areas of the Tokonoma is an Arborvitae log. It's from a tree that I cut down twelve years ago, to make room for the excavator to get to the back yard when we started our project. I peeled the bark off the multiple trunks and have let them season outside since then. 

Marking the joint.

I chose another length of Arborvitae, smaller and less regular, as a cross member. Although most of the joints in the tea house are made with the help of bolts, I wanted this piece to be joined in the traditional way.

The finished joint.

I hung the cross piece from fishing line and adjusted it until I thought it looked just right. Then I transfered the diameter of each end onto the corresponding upright using a paper template.

Post and crosspiece in place.

I carved out a receptacle for each end and assembled them. This was one case where simplicity was ignored for the sake of aesthetics. The Tokonoma, in my mind, is the heart of the structure. Using the raw, unshaped wood reminds me of the trees outside. The fact that it was once one of those trees makes it even more meaningful.

Detail of braces.

My plan is to stucco the interior and exterior walls of the tea house. Between those two three-quarter-inch layers of Portland cement stucco, will be the pink styrofoam you see here. The wooden braces hold the foam sheets in the center of the cedar 4x4s.

The round window.

This window was another departure from simplicity — at least where construction was concerned. But I think it provides a nice contrast to all of the ninety degree angles elsewhere in the building.

Guest's door.

In the picture above, you can see the guest's door and a narrow window above it. Traditionally the door to the tea house is very low, forcing guests to humble themselves as they enter on their knees. I think that there is also some folklore about Samarai swordsmen having to leave their swords outside and entering head first — a real sign of trust.

Front window.

The narrow window on the front of the tea house actually wraps around to the south side. It frames a panoramic view of the pond.

Host's door.

Linda argued against the traditional "humility" door. I think she thought that as we aged, it would become more and more of an inconvenience. Reading about tea houses one day, I discovered that they often had a separate door for the host. Problem solved! The host's door (above) looks out onto the upper pool: the origin of the pond.

Front view.

I added a panel between the building's frame and the support post to reinforce the notion of isolation. It partially blocks the view between the guest's door and our house.

View from the bottom of the black steps.

View from the gravel beach.

View from across the pond.

View from across the stepping stones that cross the stream.

View of the host's door with our house in the background.

View of the round window from below.

A visitor's first view of the tea house from the western path.

My garden odyssey: The Tea House rises

Episode XXX

HE SAID: I had read that, in early days, people living in areas prone to freeze/thaw cycles would build structures on foundations of dry set stone. The stones would move and shift with the seasons, and the building would float on top of all that activity.

I decided to adapt that approach using tumbled concrete pavers, both for their regularity and for the rustic look of the chipped edges and subtly varied color. I dug a foundation trench, including an outlet trench on the down hill corner for drainage. I packed the bottom with several inches of crushed limestone, and added four inch perforated drainage tubing along the perimeter.

In determining the dimensions of the tea house, I began with the size of the concrete blocks. I determined that I could lay a foundation 7' 7" X 9' 7" without any cutting. That meant that once I added a 4" X 4" frame on top, I would be left with a floor space of 7 X 9 feet. If I used 2 feet of that space for the Tokonoma (display area), I was left with a 7 foot square. If I made the ceiling 7 feet high, I would have an area for tea that was a perfect 7 foot cube! No, I'm not into numerology or anything; but the idea of being able to sit in a 7 foot cube and look out onto the pond while sipping tea (or bourbon, for that matter), pleased me very much.

With the foundation in place, I turned my attention to wood. I started with two 10 foot-long and two 8 foot-long 8" X 8" cedar timbers. I notched these in order to join them at the ends and to establish the locations for the floor joists and the upright members.

I had back-filled along the inside and outside of the foundation wall with pea gravel to facilitate drainage. The gravel on the interior of the foundation reminded me so much of a Zen garden that I couldn't resist adding an arrangement of small rocks. It is a secret garden that I am sharing with someone other than Linda for the first time.

Once the project was underway, I got into a rhythm of measuring, cutting, and hauling lumber back and forth between the tea house and the saw in the garage. I was working from a plan of sorts, but an awful lot of the building was made up as I went along. Problems I hadn't anticipated would crop up, often requiring modifications in my plan. But, before I knew it, I had the basic frame of the tea house in place and Winter was bearing down on us.

I added some temporary rafters and a tarp to keep the snow off, and wrapped the sides in plastic sheeting for additional protection from the elements until I could get back to work in the Spring.

There were things I had to do before I could add the roof. The overhang at the front and back of the structure was such that it would need additional support. The previous Fall I had purchased five large stones to arrange as stepping stones and support stones in front of the entrance. There was also a large cut-granite block to function as the front step to the tea house. I drove the stones home in my truck without giving any real thought to how I would get them to the tea house. They were too heavy to pull up the hill, even with a dolly.

I imposed upon the generosity of the neighbor behind us once more. From his house, it was all down hill to my yard. We slid the stones off the truck using wooden ramps and onto a sled cobbled together out of plywood and rope. We dragged the stones down to the fence gate where they waited as patiently as rocks can wait for Spring.

But my problems weren't over yet. I still had to get them across the stream. I managed this with a combination of PVC pipe rollers and more plywood. The trouble with working alone, is that I frequently forget to take pictures. I think you would have enjoyed seeing that little engineering project.

As with almost everything involving the garden, the roof took longer and was more complicated than I would have imagined. I wanted it to look attractive not only from the outside, but also looking up at it from the inside. That meant that the pattern of the supports for the shingles had to be both functional and appealing. It also meant that I had to use a variety of nail lengths, depending on the number and thickness of the shingles, in order to keep any nails from showing on the inside.

A small miscalculation meant that the roof and a tree insisted on occupying the same space. I built the roof around the tree, although it may not be all that many years before the opening will have to be enlarged. With any luck that will be a problem someone else will have to solve. 

Many years ago my doctor told me that I was genetically prone to hernia. He was right. I've had four! They tend to develop gradually, with subtle symptoms that one wants to ignore; and for a while you can. Eventually, however they become unmistakable. That was the case while installing the roof. I think hauling those bundles of shingles up the hill and then up the ladder to the roof was what really pushed things along.

The roof got finished and the surgery was a success — laparoscopy this time, very cool. 

Everything, as I've said, takes longer than you plan. I managed to make some progress on the carpentry details last summer, but family obligations meant that I wasn't able to begin filling in the walls with stucco. And so far this season, I've been lucky to keep up with basic maintenance chores. But it's still only June, and with any luck we'll have a long beautiful Fall to continue working. In the meantime, even in it's unfinished state, the tea house is a welcome shelter in our garden.

My garden odyssey: Evolution of an idea

Episode XXIX

HE SAID: From the moment Eastern thought began to intrude on our garden plans, I knew there had to be a tea house. It took me nearly ten years to figure out exactly what that meant.

In the earliest plans, tediously drawn on the computer with Adobe Illustrator, the tea house was a gray square in the back west part of the garden. In my mind, and in early sketches, I conceived a modest rustic structure: part tool shed and part covered bench. And, although the structure itself evolved through many different versions, the location never changed.

I picked the location for several reasons. It was at a distance from the house, providing a destination; and it was hidden behind the spruce trees, adding some mystery. I also wanted it near the waterfall to take advantage of the sound. And, most important, I wanted it located where it would provide a view down onto the pond.

I read dozens of books on Japanese tea gardens, noting that the ideal of a tea house changed over time, from the early concept of a primitive thatched-roof hut, to works of exquisite craftsmanship, to strange contemporary conceptual versions. What era, I asked myself, did I want to adopt?

I also became distracted, for a time, by the extensive literature available on the topic of cabins. After all, wasn't the original tea house just a Japanese cabin in the woods? Michael Pollan's "A Place of My Own" made a particularly strong impression on me. My concept of a tea house began to morph into the idea of a studio — a male retreat. In the end I came to my senses. After all, Pollan had hired an architect and spent $30,000 or more by my estimate on his "writing shack." 

And my space was limited, not just in terms of the size of the yard but also in terms of scale. I didn't want a building that overwhelmed the other elements of the garden: stream, pond, rocks, paths and plants. Essentially, it needed to be as small as possible and still be functional as a modest space for entertaining one or two other people or just a place for solitude and contemplation.

Tea House at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

I considered using the basic Japanese unit of the tatami mat — the roughly three foot by six foot flooring element that traditional Japanese architecture is based on. It corresponds to the Western module, the four by eight foot sheet of plywood. The tatami idea didn't work. Standard Western lumber sizes, which I would have to work with, meant I'd have to come up with my own proportions.

To get a sense of what the interior space might feel like we made floor plans on the living room rug with masking tape and sat on the floor inside the lines, pretending to drink tea. To get a sense of the impact the tea house would have on the garden, I made a frame to indicate the size and elevation of the floor and added a 2X4 to suggest it's height. The rest I imagined from various positions in the yard. I made more drawings, studied Japanese and Western wood joinery, and went back over books I had already studied any number of times. We visited tea houses whenever we could, both in gardens and museums. 

Incrementally I began to eliminate options as too expensive, too demanding on my limited skills, or inconsistent with the aesthetic choices we had already made in the garden. It was hard leaving some options behind. 

Japanese Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden

I decided against trying to use traditional wood joinery (no metal!) and opted instead for simple joints fastened with bolts. I chose cedar 4x4s for my framing material and cedar shingles for the roof to echo the fence. And after considering several options, I settled on tumbled cement paving stones for the foundation. To infill the walls between the framing, I would use stucco in place of the traditional straw and mud.

It was, finally, time to commit, time to break ground. That was August 1, 2005.