Yurt: Floor Finishing

So, we did the final coat on the floor about 3 weeks back now.  We wanted to add some beeswax to help harden the floor and give it a more finished look.  We heated the linseed oil and added the beeswax to it while on heat.  Once the wax was melted, the whole can it was heated in was brought into the yurt.  The first bout, had way too much beeswax and it was hardening up immediately.  So, we added more oil, reheated it and tried again.  I was very discouraged and concerned about whether to even continue.  In the end, we think we had about 2/3 linseed oil to 1/3 beeswax.  I think I might suggest trying 1/4 beeswax to 3/4 linseed oil, though ours ended up coming out OK.

So, basically, we ended up with, I think, too much wax on the floor.  Brent had to use a heat gun to melt the mixture on the floor and rub in what he could while also using a rag to absorb what the floor couldn't.  Meanwhile, I was working ahead of him, scraping off excess wax.  It was very time intensive.

We thought maybe we could buff the floor with a car buffer, to bring more of a finished look.  Nope, didn't do a dang thing.

Clearly we didn't quite get this part figured out right.  It looks OK, but has been tacky to walk on - you could hear your shoes sticking to it slightly.  That's gotten better over time.  Now that we are moved in, I did my first real sweeping today and it sweeps OK.  The bits of dog fur kind of wants to stick a bit, but that could just be that the floor isn't a slick surface.  The linseed oil/wax mixture definitely helped the "grouting" solidify and stay in place.

Linseed oil-beeswax coating.

This shows where the floor is done vs still overly coated in wax mixture.

Done!