Day 85: Painting the Courtyard Floor, Closing the Log

Day eighty-five. The last item on the construction list was, fittingly, the ground itself.

The courtyard’s finish. The madang — the courtyard that anchors everything — got its wearing surface: Aegrina Stone Floor by Samhwa, a cement-based coating carrying real stone aggregate, in “cork stone” — chosen to give back the feel of a traditional earthen courtyard with the durability of a modern coating. Three pails at ₩75,000 each, plus one more ordered for the final pass.

The method, refined mid-job through one instructive failure:

• Preparation is the coating: industrial vacuum over the whole slab (dust is the enemy of adhesion), then ~20 meters of masking tape along the wall-to-floor junction
• Stir constantly — the stone particles sink the moment you stop
• Sponge roller, half-loaded, thin passes. The failed shortcut: pouring coating onto the floor and spreading it — the aggregate clumps and the texture is ruined. Roller-loading is not optional
• Tape off immediately after each coat (a rule this project has now carved into stone, appropriately)
• Second coat targeted at thin-aggregate zones after the first dried; a third, final pass to come

And then it was done. With the courtyard floor curing, every major construction process — interior and exterior, structure and finish — is officially complete. Eighty-five working days from the first demolition sack to a courtyard you’d photograph. What remains is a short list of touch-ups (wapyeon pointing gaps, seam putty, planting the bed) — and then furniture, styling, permits, and the entirely different project of running this place.

The afternoon was spent unboxing: furniture, kitchenware, guest amenities — the props of the stage this house has become. The construction log closes here. The stay’s story is next.