Bonnaroo Post Office

My latest project was at the Bonnaroo music and arts festival in Coffee County Tennessee. It was the 8th year of the summer festival and it was my first experience with such an event. I arrived a week eary to coordinate the restoration of their strawbale post office with a group of volunteers.

As a result of the rush before the festival, and with no real intention of the building lasting more than one season anyway, some importat details were missed, most importantly the roof. It was beautifully improvised from scrap lumber and sheets of reclaimed corrugated steel but as is the risk of building complicated roofs, they’re much more likely to leak than simple ones.

Upon inspecting the building in May they found that the roof had been leaking above the bales in places. Definetly a bad thing, but otherwise the building was in pretty good shape. The plaster held up well considering it never recieved the final weather resistant coat. Deciding that the building was worth investing in as a permanent structure, a post and beam framework was set under the roof and the leaks were fixed.

I was brought in to assess the water damage to the walls and replace the rotten bales. Then I lead a volunteer crew through the plastering and general fixing-up of the building.

This is the site when I arrived a week before the festival.

 

The worst of the visible damage looked like this.

Lesson on the importance of detailing. Think like water.

My first morning I got started right away and busted plaster. With a dust mask and a framing hammer I broke plaster from the worst sections to see what the damage had been. I also dug into parts of the wall that looked good, to see if they were solid, dry, mold free and worth saving. They were.

 

What I found was that probably 80% of the bales were fine. They were dense, with strong straws and smelled fine. The color of the straw was no longer golden shiny yellow, but a dull dustier color. Where there was water damage it was obvious. The worse places had veins or pockets of black, wet, straw compost. Most of the damaged straw was dry but had been wet frequently enough to be dusty with mold and quite brittle if you pulled on a single or even a chunk of straw.

I took out this entire section. The black vein is compost like and damp. about a 4′ section was weak gray straw.

The walls were strapped with bamboo, which helped to keep the oval form. Note the diamond lath bridging the straw/doorframe joint.

 

 

the biggest hole

 

new bales

After the new bales were placed, I trimmed the walls with a chainsaw to even things up and prepare the walls for plaster. The next step was to apply a coat of thick clay slip to help adhere the plaster to the straw. Then we applied a coat of plaster to the fresh bales, and another coat over the entire building. The plaster was mixed in a mortar mixer. I spent most of my time behind the mixer, stopping every few mixes to check on the progress. The plaster was made of local clayey subsoil, sand, chopped straw, and water. The final plaster mix was made sandier and used finer straw, to minimize cracking and allow for a finer finnish.

We completed the plaster two days before the festival, leaving us a day to paint and build some furniture, as well as clean up and make everything look nice.

Dusk