One of the most frequently asked questions of me has been, "What is your house like over there?" Well, let's see...

It actually consists of 2 parts, one 80 years old and basically made of mud bricks, and the other newly built by us, made of clay bricks. Both parts are covered in a mixture of dirt, cement and lime-well, we think it's lime. Maybe you chemistry folks can help us out. This white stuff is sold in chunks, and when immersed in water is immediately boils and reacts. It gets blistering hot and actually bubbles. Then, after it sits for about 5 hours, the reaction is over and people use it to whitewash. Like you see here. But see the bottom part?? It is weathered and needing a fresh coat of not just paint, but also the "stucko" that goes underneath.


Every year or so, the entire bottom meter of our house must be re-mudded with this mixture. It is not very strong and flakes off making the house look very untidy.

So, what exactly is that process?? We had this done, again, this year, and I thought I'd chronicle it for you. The house looks like this before- and to be quite honest, there is quite a "keep up with the Jones's" mentality here. BIG TIME, in fact. A house that has gotten this bad, is gossiped about, so we try to keep it up.

By the way, see the pipes along the house? Those are the hot water pipes that bring our hot water for heating to us in the winter. The water circulates around the house keeping us nice and toasty from October to April.

The whole outer layer of the mud mixture has to be taken off all the way down to the brick underneath. This part is kinda fun, but very messy! Then a large batch of mud, cement, and the white stuff get mixed together. See the white stuff in the bucket behind there?

See the area that had been pulled off? All that will be filled in, then smoothed out with a piece of wood. It is extremely hard work, and a whole house would take about a week. For our little piece in the front of the house, our worker took 2 whole (very long) days of mud slinging. Brings a whole new meaning to that term, doesn't it??

Here is our worker starting to smooth out the last bit he threw on there.

And a wider angle.

The corners are rather tricky. You need to put a long, thin board along one side and sling mud against it. As it hardens, you can smooth out a nice corner, but they never really get perfectly straight.

After it's all dry in a few days, we use the "white stuff" to whitewash the newly mudded parts and it finally looks like this:

So, there you have it. The yearly (or bi-yearly) process of re-mudding our house. Someday, it will be nice to back in the land of painting every 10 years!

Enjoying my white, white house,

Your SteppeSister