EarthshipFinishMud

Interior Continued

Now it's time to put on some finishing touches. We decided to pour a cement floor. To do so our current concrete slab had to be really clean. After all of the mud and dirt and stucco and saw dust, the floors were really dirty and getting them clean was a really big effort.

We decided to do the finish floor before the finish mud because we wanted to put tile along the bottom of the walls as a base board. If we would have done the finish mud before the floor, I would not have known how thick the floor was, and the tile would not be in the right place.

Our concrete slab had a "brushed" finish instead of a troweled finish. This was so that we could put tile down. Tile for a space this big would have been really expensive. Then I thought about having to cut all of the square tiles to go around the round rooms and decided to do something else. We found a "self-leveling" cement product, Ardex SD-T, that you mix, pour out and then you can stain it. Like usual nothing goes as well as we'd

planned. It's a really long story, but I will not be buying anything from White Cap again. We got about half of the house poured and it was clear that we were screwing up the whole thing. The Ardex set up so fast that the first batch was partially cured before the next batch was mixed. It was nasty, ugly and expensive. I was pretty upset. I did a bunch more research and calling around and found a similar product at a cheaper price that also set up MUCH slower: Fowtop HD made by U.S. Industries. It is a much better product I think. We poured it about 1/4" thick, let it cure and then sprayed stain onto it. The stain is a water based concrete stain called by Mason's Select. I taped off big flagstone shapes with masking tape

mixed custom colors and then sprayed the stain on with my Wagner power painter. I used a couple of other techniques, like sponging and wet-on-wet application to get the effect I was after. Once I had it the way I liked it I let it dry and then put a clear coat over the top. I don't think these pictures do justice to the finished product, it turned out really well. The stain is not as durable as I hoped. It is possible to scratch it. I think this is because the Flowtop was harder and less permeable than typical concrete. I should have acid-etched the surface before I layed the stain.

This picture shows how I made the floor two-toned. I made a "walk way" where the natural flow of traffic goes through the house. The picture also shows some of the cabinets, the doors of which are made out of broken pallets, and the tile work of the counter tops. I'll put better detail pictures of these items up when I get them.

After the floor was down, it was time for the BIG project: finish mud. We attached the base-board tiles with mud and, once those were dry, we started the finish mud. The mix was 2 sand, 1 dirt and about 1/2 handful

of chopped straw. We started in the middle room, thinking that we'd make our mistakes in the room that would have the least traffic.

We covered the floor in plastic, called everybody we knew, and mixed some mud. This is a slow process. It takes a lot of work to get a nice flat wall. The first day we had WAY too many people. I wanted to be the only person working the finish trowel, so all of our help was going much faster. The mud started to dry faster than I could finish it, so we tried to keep it moist with a mister on a garden hose. We misted the wall so much water on the wall that some of the clay was slowly washing off of the wall. It looked great, but as it dried it seemed really sandy, but there were no cracks. I decided to change the mix some and remove some sand for the master bedroom. Mistake! The new mix went on fine but then cracked as it dried. It wasn't terrible, but not perfect either. The middle room mix was perfect and it only SEEMED sandy because we washed all the clay out of it! Whoops.

Anxious to move in and not anxious to do the whole thing again, we decided to live with the walls as they were. We'll go back and fix them later. I wish that I would have gotten more adobe experience BEFORE I started with our walls. The parts of the walls that look good lood really good, and the bad parts aren't too bad. I am so glad that we decided to do adobe instead of stucco or anything else.

Ellen celebrates the last mud mix. We move in as soon as the walls are dry!