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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Frugal flooring: PAINT!

When we moved into this house a few years ago, the kitchen and laundry room were carpeted! Yuck. A few months later we tore all that out and scrapped off the two layers of flooring underneath. What was left was a black, sticky mess. After time, the stickiness when away but it was still quite ugly and things did stick to it. Also, it was very hard to keep clean. We recently had some brethren stay with us for a few weeks and they said, "Why don't you paint it?" Dah! Several years ago my sister-in-law painted her not-so-desirable-floor, but I had forgotten all about it. I'm so thankful for the reminder.

We spent less than $30 and still have a half gallon of paint left over. I did not take 'before' pictures but you might catch glimpses of it in other pictures on this blog. Here are a few pictures - you might be able to see the paint sample on the kitchen floor? We are pleased with the results, and very thankful too. Now we have to fill in the gap where a wall used to be and also paint the kitchen cabinets and walls. Ok, there is more to do as well but who cares? I'm just thankful to have a floor I can keep clean now. I'm sure all the visitors with crawling babies will be thankful too.

UPDATE - I found a decent picture of how the floor looked before ... I'm even more thankful now for the cheap, easy 'fix.'

ANOTHER UPDATE (1/5/13) - After walking on this floor and abusing it in various ways for a few months, I see it is a good idea to have two coats and a clear coat. It still looks very good, however the extra protection will be good I'm sure. We'll do the second coat and a clear coat as soon as it's nice enough to leave the doors and windows open ... and also when I'm out of town a few days!! The smell really bothers me :)





5 comments:

  1. How did you prep the floor? Did you use a paint that is specifically for floors?

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  2. Very spiffy! I remember my grandma paiting the concrete floor of her indoor porch once. I'd like to paint our floor when the carpet gets worn out though we've got an OSB floor, not sure how that would go. Great job!

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  3. Becky, we swept and washed/scrubbed it as best we could and used an indoor/outdoor latex floor paint. Oil based would have probably been more durable but I cannot handle the fumes. We used Valspar brand because Lowes is near us ... however I 'wish' I would have went to a bigger city where there is a Home Depot and got my favorite paint: Bear. My dad suggested a clear coat too. If we do that I'll wait till we are going out of town.

    Vanessa - what is OSB?

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  4. OSB stands for oriented strand board, the sheets of wood usually use to sheet a house that looks like it is made out of chips of wood. We had this flooring in the house we were building and were on a serious budget. We used Lowes oil based floor paint (we were able to get it tinted to the color we wanted:) ) We also used an oil based primer designed for floors. It held up well to the Alaska winter traffic and we didn't even clear coat it. While it was stinky at first it was cheap (all said and done I think we spent about $150 for the whole house, about 1000 sq ft) and it worked great!

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