Ceilings

Wood
Can be cheap or expensive depending on what you go with. Often use pine - cheap and grows quickly.

Seal it with linseed oil mixed with thinner. Also used SuperDecks.

Cloth
Cheap alternative to wood. Can use burlap. Still needs battens.

Cardboard
Cheap. Can stain and seal.

Metal
Got texture and color. Can use scrap. Mold isn't a problem.

Floors
Typically masonary, as want a mass floor.

Concrete slabs
3-4-5 rule. 3 cement - 4 sand - 5 gravel. Or 1/2 bag cement, 2 sand, 2 gravel.

Lay down control joins (wood beams) to control where cracks go. The thicker the slab, the less control joints you need. Also pour onto remesh, for extra strength and to keep the different slabs together.

Cork the gaps between slabs. Takes 30 days for concrete to cure.

Can stain concrete. Can also dye the the concrete, which means don't have to maintain it later (but takes a lot of dye).

Can be good to top-coat concrete floors as easily stain. Urethane gives glossy finish.

$3-4/sq ft.

Thick stone
Often use flag stone, a.k.a. sandstone. Triangles-shape slabs are good to work with. Requires a bunch of trick manouvering to get the pieces layed nicely. Need to drop each chunk in, so has good adheshion to the slab underneath. Then need to level each piece individual, trying to get all the pieces averages out nicely. May need to jump on them to make them move. After that, need to fill the in between bits with grout.

The cracks between the rocks should go down half to full way to concrete slab. Depends on grout- weaker grout means want less depth difference.

Suggest looks best when gap between rocks is consistent. 1 finger or 2 finger, doesn't matter, so long as it stays the same.

After finish layout, top coat with linseed mixed with thinner. 50-50 on first coat, move to 65% linseed as make additional coats (~3).

Brick
The process is to dig the floor down to the brick height + 2-3" of sand height. Fill the floor with the concrete-type sand and level it. Use a special trowel to make it nice and flat.

To lay out, start in the middel. Draw strings to the middle from the 4 edges, so get a nice square angle. Start in the middle laying out the bricks, doing a quadrant at a time. Means can have several people doing at the same time.

After finishing laying down bricks, sweep in super-fine blast sand. That keeps the bricks in place.

For the edges, need a brick saw. Want to lay out the edges as getting close to finishing the walls. Need to finish the brick floor first, as the walls come down onto the brick floor.

Adobe
The least expensive. Usually just site-earth and sand.

Mix 2 sand, 1 clay. Need to sift to get rid of gravel.

To find out how sandy water is, put soil and water in a jar. Shake until all material is suspended, wait 24 hours, then get see the amounts of sand vs clay in the jar.

Can mix straw, glass or fibers into the mix to give it strength.

When pouring, must do layers (with complete drying in between), not the whole amount. For layers, start with 1.5" coat, then 0.75" layer, then 0.5" layer, then 0.25" layer.

Coat with linseed oil mix to give it nice wet look.

Wood
Lay down plaster, then 2 layers of 2" of plywood in cross directions. Screw the pieces to each other. Then screw the final floor pieces on top of the plywood floor.

Tile
Adhered to a concrete slab. Super flat slab. Use title adhesive, trowel it on. Then use square trowel to make adhesive stand up.

After grout, sweep the grout in a diagonal angles to fill the gaps. Not in line with the tiles.

Walls
Typically float walls with a sponge to make nice grainy. In showers though want a slick wall.