Stenciled concrete floor

 
 This room has been the bane of my existence since we moved into our 1948 cottage style house two years ago. A basic narrow space with no character other than the blood colored painted concrete. I mean whats not to hate?  Blech!

I was determined to make it pretty! I got my sights set on painting the concrete after perusing the internet for ideas. There was plenty of inspiration. (Thanks interwebs!)

  First we had to clean the slate, so we gutted the room down to the studs. Notice there is siding on the inside...this room was actually a screened in porch that was later walled in.

We rented an orbital sander from Lowes with a heavy duty abrasive disc to help remove the paint. After going at it for awhile we realized that actually removing the paint wasn't going to happen so we settled on giving it a solid scuff so that the paint would have something to adhere to.

 Then the not so fun part, clean, clean , clean until you can clean no longer.  Our mop heads looked like they'd been used to clean up a murder scene.  They say you should use muriatic acid on the floor to deep clean it and give the best base for adhesion, but honestly, I ran out of cleaning steam and was ready to paint. It looked clean to me! If you're one of those that really likes to follow directions on things, you should use muriatic acid for the cleaning, just saying.

I chose Sherwin Williams Porch and Floor enamel as my base after reading this blog's great tutorial. Painting floors is a breeze because there's no need for a paint tray, you can just pour it on and spread it with your roller. I let it dry for 24 hours then did a second coat just to be on the safe side.

For my stencil design I decided to use an allover design typically used for wall stencils.  I chose this stencil because I wanted it to flow with the wood grain in the rest of the house. 

I chose two complimenting colors to give the design some kick as well. Starting in one corner of the room, I loaded my foam roller and got to work. Let me tell you, after finishing the first one and finding it more difficult and time consuming than I thought, I was like " this damn design is going on the wall, the floor is staying one color, oh hell no, no way, no how"........................................................................................

                                                                                                                                                                                       

.......but then I poured myself another glass of wine and decided I'd try to do at least a few more and then after that if I still wanted to throw in the towel I could. Let me also add that for some crazy reason I started this at 9pm.  After doing a few more and seeing the progress, I figured screw it, I'm getting it done!


2:30 am with amazing results! I was feeling incredibly proud of myself and amazed that it came out so good. I took a bunch of pictures and texted them to my (sleeping) husband who was away on business. I bet he loved those middle of the night
text alerts.

I allowed the paint to dry for another 48 hours before messing with it anymore.
The porch and floor enamel only comes in satin and I wanted a gloss coat.  Again on this blog, she uses H&C Wet Look Concrete Sealer which is another product you can buy from Sherwin Williams. Here's the funny part.
(RANT ALERT!) I went to the Sherwin Williams closest to my house and told the employee that I was putting the gloss coat over the floor and enamel paint he looked at me like I had three heads. He told me that most likely all the paint would peel up from the floor if I put the gloss coat on it and the product wasn't made for that, blah blah blah. I left without my gloss coat on a mission to find out the truth! I called the SW 800 number and got a very friendly helpful woman who told me that I could indeed do what I was planning on doing and that it should cause no issues.

Feeling vindicated about my plan, I stopped at a different Sherwin Williams the next day to pick up my gloss coat. I decided to ask the guy there just to see what he would say. Well, he again looked at me like I was an idiot and said that he wouldn't recommend using the product like that. I then told him that the 800 number agents told me I could, which then had him backtrack a bit and say "oh well, if they say it can then maybe you can". Ugh. He gave me a product spec sheet and I again left without buying the gloss coat because I was paranoid that my entire paint job would get all FUBAR. I got in the car and called the 800 number again. This time I got a snarky little man who told me that the product I was trying to use wasn't made for that (even though I read him the spec sheet which said it could be applied over paint) and that I should call their marine paint division to find a product that would put a gloss coat over the satin coat. UGH UGH UGH, back to square one. I called the marine division, who promptly told me in so many words that I was crazy for calling them and that whoever I talked to didn't know what they were talking about. So, for the third time I called the 800 number. This time I got another woman who was very apolgetic about all the contrary information I was being given. She told me that I could indeed use the gloss coat on the floor enamel and that I should always listen to women because they know best! Truer words were never spoken! 

                                                                             

 TA-DA! Floor done and shiny!

           In case you didn't notice, we also added three news windows and a twelve foot door whose escapades I'll save for the post entitled "Holy hell, don't drop it!"