Hardwood Over Red Clay Paste: The Floor Goes In

Days sixty-seven and sixty-eight. If a room is ceiling, walls, and floor, today the third and final surface arrived — and outranked them all.

The floor. The solid-wood flooring (a sponsorship we’re grateful for — the most expensive material category in the whole build) went in over two days of two-man professional work, about eight hours of installation. The method has a lovely traditional echo: the boards bed into hwangto paste — an eco-friendly red-clay adhesive troweled across our leveling pour — and then lock to each other, tongue into groove, each board driven home with a big rubber mallet. Clay holds the field down; joinery holds it together.

The opening decision was aesthetic: which way the grain runs. After that, rhythm — full-length boards striding across the open field, then the craftsmanship at the edges, where boards were measured and trimmed individually against walls that (of course) run true nowhere. Perimeter siliconed, and the installers capped their own work with cardboard protection throughout, plus leftover boards for us.

We have watched this house transform many times now — the tiles, the windows, the white walls. Nothing compares to the floor. The moment it closed, the construction site ended and a house began: the color grounds the stained rafters, footsteps sound domestic, and you involuntarily start removing your shoes.

Light by laser. In parallel: downlight positions across all the light boxes — master bedroom through annex — laser-leveled, hole-sawed, and fitted; the kitchen’s T5 indirect strip wired above the cabinets. A May 5th sourcing run to Euljiro’s lighting district stocked the remaining fixtures: dining pendant and exterior lamps (₩320,000) and three serious Zeroc H ventilation fans (₩210,000) for the wet rooms.

Ceiling, walls, floor: the room’s three planes, all finally speaking the same language.