Natural Plasters & Earthen Floors
Natural Plasters with Clay & Lime Finishes
Spring 2023 Workshop
A 5-day workshop teaching Natural Plasters and Finishes including polished clay, water-resistant Tadelakt and Earthen Floors.
It will cover the essentials of natural and earthen plasters and dive deeper into the more specific finishes for your home. Each participant will have their own practice panel to learn these methods with ease and repetition.
This workshop will cover a large range of natural wall and floor finishes including:
- Simple clay & lime basecoats
- Smoothed and polished clay finishes
- Clay paint
- Tadelakt – a water-resistant lime plaster from Morrocco
- Lime fresco
- Stabilized exterior plasters
- Earthen floors practice, from floor base to finish
This course is suitable for both beginners and experts. You will learn everything from the basics, such as finding soil, how to compose a mix, and applying that mix, and then the more advanced practices, such as water-resistant lime tadelakt. You will leave with a confidence and understanding of how to coat walls in your own home with beautiful, creative earth finishes.
* This course begins with orientation and dinner Sunday evening 6pm, April 23 and ends Saturday at 10.30am April 29, with a morning class.
Daily Workshop Schedule
- Arrival previous evening, April 23, dinner included at 7pm, introductions at 8pm,
- 24 April – Learning Base Coat and Levelling
- Clay and Lime overview and theory
- How to use Hawk & Trowel
- Practice applying and levelling
- Laying floor base
- Lime basecoat
- Finish clay layer
- Second floor layer
- Canelo Site tour
- Tadelakt
- Cay polish
- Clay paint
- Oil floor
- Exterior Plasters
- Finish Tadelakt
- Explore other mixes
- April 29 – Final Morning Class – Finishing, oiling, clean-up, final questions
- Course ends at 10:30am
Workshop Instructor: Benito Steen
Benito was born and raised in southeastern Arizona where his parents teach natural building. He comes from a long lineage of artists and makers and grew up surrounded by people from around the world coming in with new skills and crafts every day. Homeschooled, he gravitated early on as teenagers towards the trades and arts such as: plastering, blacksmithing and woodworking.
A builder and an artist, Benito strives to find the connection between space and beauty, shelter and nature, the hand and materials. He has taught natural building throughout Latin American and Southeast Asia. Always learning and experimenting he mixes old techniques with the new, to create beautifully sustainable and healthy houses.
He and his brother Kalin have a youtube channel, making videos about natural building and crafting with earth. See the Nito Project.