Making and applying a clay paint · Living Earth Structures

Making and applying a clay paint

Here’s a little demo on making a clay paint to put over an earthen plaster. Its main purpose is to smooth out the surface, give it a nice color and help to shed water off the wall. It’s basically a mixture of equal parts fine Sand, sifted clay and either flour paste or methyl cellulose which I got from a company called Clay Hill plaster in Oregon. You can find it online. To make it it’s one part powder to about 100 parts water so a little bit goes a long way. The only reason I’m not using flour paste here is there is some concerns about possibility of molding here in Oregon, where it rains a lot in the winter which I’ve never experienced, but some folks here apparently have if there is concern about that, you could also add borax to the mix to help prevent molding. The water glass I’m referring to here in the video is also called sodium silicate which is a mixture of silica sand and soda ash heated up and made into a liquid solution. I found this online. It needs to be diluted at least 50% with water. I tried diluting it with just 30% and had a major case of efflorescence, so I had to scrape off the layer and applied a coat of clay plaster and clay paint again.

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Making and applying a clay paint