Our friend Dan Durica of Hardcore Sustainable visited us here at home in Berea, Kentucky earlier in the spring. While he was here, April gave him a tour of the off-grid straw bale house we helped friends design and build during our first two years living in the area. Dan whipped up a video tour of the house in progress, which you can watch above.
This week, I traveled to eastern Pennsylvania to work with Gabe Franklin of The Art of Plaster to install a large earthen floor in a straw bale home. We’ve been in talks about collaborating and this project was the perfect opportunity to sling mud together. And here I thought the 900 sq. ft. floor of this spring was big — this floor comes in at 1500 sq. ft. Earthen floors represent a lot of hard labor, so the good company and our mutual love of clay carried us through to the end.
Read ahead for some more photos of the process!
Summer rolls onward, swiftly and sweatily. Recently, I had the chance to rebuild a spring-fed cedar outdoor shower at friends’ property just down the road. It was nice to work so close to home after a spring full of back and forth to do the big plaster project in western Kentucky. The former shower was a nailed-together hodgepodge of scraps and splinters, and this was a chance to start afresh with some decent materials.
Read ahead for some tips on how to make these ergonomic Japanese plaster hawks
Japanese-style plaster hawks are a comfortable, ergonomic alternative to the typical hawk design you come across in the states. Best of all, you can very easily make your own with only a few basic materials and customize the proportions to your liking. Here’s how you make your own Japanese plaster hawk.
The reward of building is seeing the progress and the character of a house take shape. This most recent plastering project has been no exception. Back when I saw the house for the first time in January, the walls were bare and the floor was gravel. It’s come a long way since then.
This photo sequence shows the three major phases of the plastering work we completed inside — bare faswall, the initial clay base coat and trim, and the finished product. What a difference!
I recommend viewing this image enlarged for the a fuller effect.
Plaster complete!
The big stretch of my spring clay plastering job is over now. It comes with a huge sense of relief, some achey shoulders, and a definite sense of accomplishment. It’s hard to remember that when we showed up to this house site two months ago, it was bare block walls. Now the space has really come to life.
Applying the first coat of lime plaster over the faswall block
Lime plaster is the source of a lot of confusion for folks, myself included. It’s taken a long time to understand even the basic ins and outs of hydraulic lime, hydrated lime, slaking, carbonation, blah blah blah. When you start to read and hear about lime plaster, it sounds a bit like alchemy. Which it kinda is. Lime is totally unlike clay plaster, which seems so simple and innocent in comparison. Lime plastering is, after all, a chemical process that you really want to ensure goes according to plan.
Applying the clay plaster base coat to faswall block
This spring is all about plaster. I’ve been hired to complete the plaster work on a faswall block home in western Kentucky, including the clay plaster interior and a lime plaster exterior. There’s 3500+ total square feet of wall between the interior and exterior, which is no slouch. I just returned home from completing the clay and lime base coats with our crew. It was a big push and I’m glad to be done… well, at least until it’s time to go back and apply the finish, anyway.
Read on to see some images of the base coat clay plaster on faswall block!
Lloyd Kahn’s latest, Small Homes: The Right Size
Lloyd Kahn of Shelter fame has a new book out, titled Small Homes: The Right Size, and I feel much gratitude that our straw bale & timber frame home is featured within its pages. Lloyd’s books have been a big source of inspiration for me these past 10 years. Flipping through Shelter, Home Work, and Builders of the Pacific Coast have been powerful influences and have helped me to feel connected to the worldwide movement of folks creating beautiful, unique, hand-built homes.
Installing the base layer of an earthen floor
Earthen floors are floors composed of compacted clay, sand, and straw. They are made flat and troweled smooth just like a concrete slab. However, the finished product is much softer on your feet… and on the earth itself. You can build an earthen floor with readily available materials. The labor input is quite high, but the material cost should be very low. And of course, the embodied energy is low, too — this is a very resilient, low tech method that can be incorporated in a variety of locales. Here’s a very short introduction and answers to common questions about earthen floors.
About The Year of Mud
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This blog is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. Since 2012, we’ve been hosting Natural Building Workshops so you can learn essential skills to build your own natural home.
