#229 Bringing the Old Stone Walls Back to Life – Sandblasting Years of Soot

"Torf", yeah All right. You can use that for your stove as well Oh yeah they burn it... yeah it's true that's what they use it for "turf stekers" they heat the houses with it Yeah, now it should be better. Yeah, they can go on here.

I could see her face. They always say: A rock has a face. A rock has a face. Yeah. many faces It's always one side, like this one, you know. Yeah, you're right. Or if you have a binder, you can pull this. Yeah. I throw this one. You can and almost all of them are usable. Yeah. I mean this is concrete, there'll go at the back. Yeah, but sometimes you know it sometimes you're you're looking for one stone for like 15 minutes sometimes. Yeah you hammer it and chisel it Crazy Frozen?

It's too close. oh it's a pillow I thought I sat on a chicken... hahah Please take some Of whatever you want to do. Oh we have enough salami They eat the whole thing.

They eat the whole thing, yea they do eat the peel. Yeah, you're right. It's laundry. I know. not drying? I think it's dry now though. It was already pretty dry yesterday since I had it It's wet now. If you don't mind, I just leave it out. Leave it out.

Yeah. at some point it's dry Every night it gets moist again. You take it off in the night I think I'll cook some tortellini as well Yeah. do we have grated cheese? Uh no, but I have Parmesan. I have a grater. here Looks like it. Gran padano It's cheese, so it is one. That's good. Sometimes I think it's like quite rude to bring this thing everywhere, but then on the other hand it's I think it's not as bad as cigarettes. No, it's part of your personality it's gonna kill me one day. Is it so bad for your health? Yeah of course it is.

But I believe it's not as bad as cigarettes Well life is bad for your health. Yeah. Wine, meat, everything. Yeah. Well, cheers. Cheers, man. Is it ready? Or so it's a little bit needs to get in. The heat needs to get inside Alright, you need to let it cool a bit. Yeah, I like a little bit. It needs to get hot. And then it's a new technique now I've developed this year, like with the aluminium foil, which is sort of dampening it. the heat impact but it's also keeping it warmer. It's like with your s stove. If you have a cast iron stove it's quickly hot, quickly cold and now it's like delayed. You're improving it Yeah haha For an efficient smoke. Yeah, efficient... German. Yeah, making everything more efficient.

There you go There are a lot of deer around here? Yeah, more. I see more wildlife than in the beginning So more deer, more wild boar, more dormice for sure. I think there's a family of six dormice in the chicken But um I don't know the the young ones they look like mice I think their tails are not fully developed yet. Okay. I don't know. What's like Dormice? What is that? Siebenschläfer Ah ok that's the word. Ah okay I didn't know that. Well it's just because they sleep seven months Gliss gliss. I think this is the... Might be the Latin name, Yeah and then there's also a lot of owls, I think because of the dormice Of course.

I have that app called um Merlin Bird app And it listens and then by the scream or the squeak or whatever it does, it recognizes a certain bird. You want to start?

Take them together. Yeah, we're gonna have to stack quite a bit higher at this point. We got some wood. We have a nice selection of scraps over there. Well, I have to be careful.

It's a nice tarp you've got there nice and heavy. Yeah. I like this one. It's nice, I I take it when I go, like in the villages, drawing or something. Oh yeah, it is comfortable. Yeah. I never trust it quite, but Think I'll need some help with this one, Valentin Yeah, coming People will think I come from the Netherlands.

Actually, yeah. Dutch rental company. It is, right? Yeah, because actually this thing is coming from the Netherlands. Netherlands but here in Italy they're not allowed on the road. I think they have lights. There should be lights here or something. I've never seen one that's not allowed on the road. And then there should be uh a plate here. Like it makes the whole trailer part of it like useless, basically Yeah, it does, but I think they need individual plates here whilst in the Netherlands you can repeat the car plate. Alright Oh you can do that yeah with the trailer? Well we have individual plates as well. Yeah, well this one has its own plate. Yeah because it's heavier. Yeah. But the light ones they can repeat the car plate. You're not going to have two lights here, are you? Two lights, yeah. All packed Thanks a lot for your help, man!

Of course. I really enjoyed it. Some sun coming through, which is nice.

It was a very gray week I got the sandblaster to work eventually. I rented this one, but it was in a very bad state. The cap was broken, or incomplete. The pot needs to be able to pressurize so that cap needs to be on there airtight. And I think some parts and rubbers were missing. So eventually I fixed it with a glove, a spoon, and strapped a rock on top and then it stayed together But it was also clogged. There was like wet sand at the bottom and in the hose so I had to clean it out first before it was functioning and it's working well I get most of the soot off, especially on the gable walls where it's less thick. One wall is pretty clean. But then where they built the fire to smoke chestnuts and whatnot, there the soot is very tarry and thick so it needs a bit more effort and time But I think I'll get it clean, at least visually.

There's also the smelly part. It smells quite bad. So if you already smell it with the roof off, it's gonna be even worse when you seal the building and have doors and windows in. I'm not sure it's I think it's gonna take a few runs. You can do this also with baking soda which has a another effect on soot I might try that but I'm not sure if this machine is capable to do that. It's it's probably a different type of soda as well as the one you get at the supermarket So I have to look into that. But first see how clean I can get it with sand. Quartz. This is quartz sand eah we made a good progress through the walls. Valentin was here He has a landscaping business. He's a young guy, very talented. He was able to help me with the walls as well.

He was here together with his overlanding friend group, his girlfriend with the Land Rover and the other guy with a Volvo. Um two years ago. It was the the week I bought the Land Rover. They were here also in September. Helping out with digging out out cabin downstairs. So it's good to have him and a good week together. He went back to Germany today. And um Yeah, next week I have some help as well. We're ready to put the rafters on now and then after that's more stone work but I think we'll also do some work on the road because that's getting worse and worse and I'm afraid that it's gonna be too bad for uh for winter Now it's okay. I'm slipping, but when there's snow it's gonna be more difficult, so this is a project that's gonna take a lot of time I want to focus on that after the buildings are kind of finished.

Spend some effort on working on this road, but this section needs to be done now, otherwise we're gonna be in trouble in winter So yeah that's next week. Autumn is beautifully coloring, still a lot of mushrooms, chestnuts are coming through here Yeah, first yellow trees. It's quite beautiful.