Castle Starcaster - Week Eight - Tiles

Castle Starcaster - Week Eight, a photo by Alennka on Flickr.

The major task of the week was adding the tiled floor in the entry hall and dining room on the ground floor. The tiles are made from air drying clay which was rolled out into a thin sheet a few millimetres thick and (very carefully) glued onto the existing floor/steps structure of the ground floor. Before the clay dried, I used a hexagonal shaped cutter (much like a cookie cutter only much smaller) to create the tiled effect. The cutter came from My Tiny World in the UK.

My original plan had been to paint the floor white with the occasional tile in black to add interest but as the clay dried, I looked at the white clay and thought "that doesn't look right" so instead of a white floor, I painted the whole lot black. . . . And I'm still not sure it looks right. The clay must not have been properly dry all the way through as new cracks have opened up around the tiles since I painted it, creating ugly white gaps. I'll leave it for a couple of days to ensure the clay is totally dry and not going to crack any more before I fill/paint these cracks and give the floor a coat of gloss to finish it provided I don't decide to paint it some other colour in the meantime.