Exterior walls

June 2026

While working on the furniture I have also been contemplating for a while about what to do with the exterior walls, or front panels.  It needed to be something rather lightweight. Then I saw a post on facebook by Laura Snoodijk, who was creating a garden in front of a brick wall which looked very realistic.  She mentioned cork, so I started thinking about it.  In turn I mentioned it to Kevin who produced a box with old cork coaster type pieces of cork in various thicknesses and also in two colours.

The panels are quite large, so I didn't have enough cork, but... the wall of our first house had two different types and colours of brick and I would have just enough of the dark cork to do the bottom part.

I have to add that before I mentioned it to Kevin I had bought a cork board, you know, one of those notice boards, and wanted to use that, but alas, the cork was to thin and could not be removed from the cardboard layer without damaging it, so that went 'out the window'!

So, I sat about cutting up the cork and applied the bricks with grey wood filler. With the bit of lighter coloured cork I produced the ordanary type of bricks for the top part of the wall.

I wish I had done a test run of the dark bricks first, because the grey wood filler showed up white! It just looked awful, but I had started and had to persevere.  

The dark bricks on the panel and the others on a test piece

It simply doesn't look right!

I finished the bottom part of the wall and left it for a few days.  I knew I would find a solution and I did!  I scraped out the gray/white woodfiller and mixed a new batch with powdered black pastel crayon.  I made it quite dark and filled the gaps between the bricks.  What a difference that made!  I am now very pleased with it and feel the courageous enough to work on the rest of the wall. 

The bricks with the dark grey mortar