First, the floor supports the weight of your entire wine cellar collection, so it must be very strong. That’s an obvious reason why wine cellars are built in the basement; you have no worries about the floor collapsing under the weight of 1,000 bottles of wine.

Second, the ground cools in the winter and warms in the summer, so both cold and heat can be transmitted through the floor into the wine cellar if it isn’t properly insulated. You can read my post on wine cellar floor insulation to see how I insulated the floor.

Finally, you will actually see the floor, so it’s important to make it aesthetically pleasing. I have previously commented that it doesn’t really matter what the walls look like, since they will be covered with wine racks. Obviously the floor won’t be covered with anything, so it’s important that it is visually appealing.

We started by framing the floor and insulating it.

Then the floor studs are covered in 3/4 inch plywood for strength.

Then a wire mesh base is installed over the plywood, and the a “cement” base is installed over the mesh.

Then, the floor tile is installed.

As you can see from the picture we chose a dark slate type tile. It does have some texture, but it is flat enough that the wine racks won’t wobble when installed.

In my next post I’ll show you the finished product.

Here’s the floor after applying the insulation:

Yes, it looks just like the walls look. The foam insulation does dry solid, but it is full of tiny air pockets, so you don’t want to walk on it, since you will likely compress the air pockets and lower the insulation value. That’s why we applied the plywood floor as soon as possible:

Yes, this picture also shows the drywall on the walls, but that’s the subject of my next post.