Pouring the mud floor and concrete porch of the closet

Getting back to the closet, Finally!!
Of course the pictures are backwards and the text does not always go where I intent it to go!!!
That said........ The first step in creating a porch is to form the area that will hold the concrete until it is hard. We decided to do the porch first so we had a hard, level area to transport the mud mixture into the building for that floor. Because concrete is soooo heavy the forms holding it have to be well supported and level. We used 2X6s the length and width of the porch and nailed them together piling dirt up around them for extra support. We sloped the slab away from the building so the water would run off the porch. The leveling was done by putting a 2X4 across the form boards with a level on top. The mixing & pouring took the two of us 1 day.


Next was the mud floor. We had previously poured a cement perimiter. There is a yard close to us where we got the clay. The mix is 30%Clay, 70% sand with a binder mixed in, we used Elmer's glue, about 2 gallons per cubic yard. For walls , straw is a good binder and it has an interesting texture. We did not want the straw pieces to deal with in the floor, so we chose the glue.
The mixture is the constancy of a thick milkshake, the thicker it is , the faster it will dry.
We poured it in sections so we could level it easily from board to edge. The photo of the floor completed with the cracks was taken a week after the pour. We will later fill these in as you will see.