Earth Floors
Saturday, January 9th, 2010
One MRI, three cortisone shots in the back, and countless hours of physical therapy, and the Inner City Farmer is back! Sort of. To finish up the the earth floor in the Man Cave (or Brandy Library, if you prefer) I needed to employ the services of Frank Meyer, and I am so glad that I did because Frank is simply the best. He’s easily in the top three or four out of all the earth floor makers in the world. Think about that. It was like having Michael Jordan stop by to help me work on my jump shot.
Frank took care of applying the first coat of linseed oil to seal the floor and left me to do the rest. He heated the oil up so that it could be spread thinner. Even so the clay was “thirsty” and the floor drank up four gallons of the stuff. For the successive coats the oil hasn’t needed to be heated, but I have thinned it by adding some Citrusolv, which I got at EcoWise. The Citrusolv helps the oil dry quicker and it makes it smell better, like oranges!
I have added four coats total at this point and plan on adding one more. It’s taking about two days for each coat to dry. But soon–within a week?–the process will be done, and we’ll be able to start using the room! For those interested in learning more about earth floors, a good article was written about them in the New York Times several years ago, and, of course, Frank is one of the main people featured in the article.