Floor Painting
It was a snowy Monday in January, the holiday season behind us and there was a bit of a lull in the action. There were many projects on our “someday” list but on this afternoon the concrete floor called out…paint me! And as it sometimes happens…this project was not even on our To Do list!
It didn’t take any convincing and in a blink we were pulling out stencils and our Chalky Patina paint, a roll or two of masking tape and brushes.
The hardest part of the process was just ahead of us…deciding on the colour! I always find that challenging but once that was determined we jumped right in.
First we swept and removed any marks on the floor, determining that the overall size, not limited by anything but our ambition, the width, would be double the size of the stencil with a border. The length would be evenly centered in the space available.
We taped out the finished size and applied two coats of the background colour, French Country. It is a creamy white, more white than cream. No priming required, no prep work other than making sure it was clean. Which, I might add is a relative term. Our floor was not squeaky by any means.
Next, the first stencil was laid down, taped to secure and we painted the Ironwood taupe colour with a stenciling brush. The bristles are cut flat on a stenciling brush so that instead of a back and forth motion when painting, it is an up and down. Taking care to not have too much paint on your brush, we often dab it off on a piece of Kraft paper. This will take off any excess. If there is surplus paint it will tend to go under the stencil and blur your lines.
To match up the pattern and have a continuous design, we flipped the stencil over, matching the shapes from the square we just painted. In other words, we mirrored the previous square.
The third square was flipped over then finishing with the fourth one, extending the pattern each time.
This continued the length of the painting.
For the final two at the end of the design, we simply taped off the design so that the pattern ended where our under coat finished.
We had decided to frame the painted floor in a black border. Using masking tape, we painted two coats of True black…removed the tape and stood back….too much black! AS is the case with most projects, the plan changes and all is not lost. We just painted over our “mistake”. We did leave a small border of black but painted the Pebble Beach border right over the remaining black. This left a nice definition without being over-powering.
We chose not to sand or distress the finished product, nor did we add a top coat of any kind, preferring to let the foot traffic in the store distress it over time.
Many customers think it is a carpet or runner but it is not until walking on it do they realize it is painted on our concrete floor.
It was a very easy project and I would suggest you can do it too! What about on your basement floor? In a hallway? I think my deck at home might be the next surface to tackle.
Come see us for your painting needs. We can show you the new “rug” in person.
