Playing in the Mud

[errantember]

So in my ongoing project to deck out the walls of my guest wing with natural plaster before my new housemate arrives on the 28th, I've now finished priming both rooms (including the ceilings) and with the help of trippedbreaker have moved on to putting down the first layer of plaster.

Originally I was going to use American Clay products, but at about $75 for a 50# bag and the pigment to color it, I was out almost a grand by the time I had enough to do the entire wing. However, I recently went to a Design, Build, Live presentation by Carole Crews a life-long veteran of earth building and plaster, and purchased her new book Clay Culture (currently only available from the author.) I decided that, despite the tight deadline, it was worth trying to mix the sand, clay, binder, and pigment myself if it were cheaper. And it's *much* cheaper. At *most* 50% as expensive, and likely more like 35-40%! I made a small test batch of each recipe, with and without the pigment, and decided I liked the homemade stuff better, anyway. The pigments are also much cheaper at Armadillo Clay, but I couldn't wait until tomorrow to start plastering, so I decided to put the first coat down without pigment. I actually liked this color the best, anyway. However, tomorrow I will proceed down to Armadillo and check out some of their other pigments. I should be able to find something exactly like I want, instead of having to settle for the meager selection of colors at my American Clay supplier, and afterward I can likely sell the American Clay products at cost and recoup my losses.

Comments

[errantember.livejournal.com]

I really like the look and feel of clay plaster. I'm also interested in building up my repertoire of natural building techniques, and clay plasters are used in most forms of mud building like cobb, adobe, and light clay. It has a lot of other supposed benefits, like humidity regulation (more likely with an entire earthen wall instead of a 1/4" coating), releasing negative ions, etc. It's also easy to fix and alter. Right now the walls are coated with various forms of paint, and one room had bad wall paper. I'm about to go to the clay store to check out the pigments.