Mom's Homemade Whitewash

Mom made it from nothing more than a thin liquid plaster 
made from slaked lime and water, and a couple of T of canning salt
to make it "wear" well. If she wanted a grayish color
she added soot or wood ashes.   You can thin by adding more water, but
don't try to thicken it by adding more lime. It needs to soak awhile
for the lime and water mixture to turn into "calcium", and
if you do add more lime, you need to allow extra time for
the transition to take place.

There are "water-based" coloring one can use if you 
desire to make your white wash...yellow wash for instance.
Yellow is known to attract beneficial insects. Green seems
to help green veggies produce better, and the color red seems 
to help red veggies preform better tho studies are still
in progress on this topic.

Sometimes Mom used a couple of egg whites mixed in the whitewash
as a "binder" if she wanted a more permanant paint to last longer
than one season. She said that lime and water, salt and egg whites 
would make the same "paint" that Hick Finn painted the fence with.

She has been known to use 1 gallon of milk, about 6 pounds of slaked lime,
1/2 cup of linseed oil, and half a cupped hand of canning salt, when 
she was painting something she wanted the paint to last longer on.  

She used colored chalk for pigments other than just white, and said that 
if I wanted to paint something a color other than white, to put one or two coats 
of just "white" on first, then the color as the last coat.

Jon

