Concrete floors are great for durability, but not… how you say… beautiful. So when I saw Bekah's newly painted mudroom floor, I was so excited to share it with you. It's amazing the difference that some paint and elbow grease can make!
Paint a variety of patterns on your concrete floors, both indoors and out:
Stripes by Better Homes and Gardens and Anythingology
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Stenciled by Young House Love and Ashley Ann Photography on Design Sponge
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Faux Painted Wood by Twenty Six Fifty Eight and Lin's Artwork on HomeTalk
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Faux Slate Tile by Simply Stone Haven and Faux Bois by Vintage Revivals
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Properly inspired? Bekah has the full tutorial on how to paint a concrete floor:
How to Paint a Concrete Floor
by Bekah of Country Mouse Tales
Hi! My name is Bekah, and you can find me over at Country Mouse Tales, where I write about our life in a little cottage on a hill. I am thrilled to share my painted mudroom floor here today!
We moved into our home in April, and have since been busy trying to love it back to life. One area that needed a LOT of love was our mudroom. The layout of our house is such that you actually enter through the back, so anyone coming to visit sees the mudroom before they see any other part of the house. When we moved in, our mudroom was definitely saying “do not enter”. You can find some true “before” pictures on my blog, but for the sake of this post, let's start with the bare concrete floor.
Our first step was giving it a good scrub down, followed by etching. If you are working with concrete, you need to etch it to give the paint something to kind of grab on to, no one wants to put all of that work in only to have the paint start flaking immediately!
I used a long handled shop broom to scrub the floor, that way I didn't have to kneel down in the cleaner while I scrubbed it. Directions vary from product to product, so follow the directions for the one you chose. We used Valspar Fast Prep, which is a premixed degreaser and etcher in one. After allowing our floors to completely dry out, I went ahead and put a coat of pure white porch/concrete paint on all of the surfaces.
I didn't bother with a paint tray for this, I just poured it out as I went, then rolled it smooth. After that, it was once again a matter of waiting. I'm impatient, and I was excited to see the end result, so this was the hardest part for me! After two solid days (I should have given it more time, I ended up causing myself more work), I started in on my lines. I drew mine with a pencil, a level, and a tape measure. I started on the far wall, and measured the starting lines for the points of my diamonds. My diamonds are 22 inches long, so I marked each spot. After that it was simply a matter of measuring and drawing. I won't lie – this is tedious. Now, on to the taping. I used Frogtape for delicate surfaces, and I put my tape on the outside edge of all of the diamonds that I was planning on painting. I used a putty knife held at an angle to give myself a good clean edge when I tore my tape off.
I used a foam roller to get a nice even coat of my grey paint (the color is New Concrete by Valspar). I gave my diamonds two coats each, and used a paint brush to do the edges. While my paint was still wet, I started pulling off the tape. Now…remember how I said I should have let my white paint cure longer? This is why.
Learn from my mistake! I went back with a paint brush and touched up all of my edges with paint, and in the end the outcome is wonderful, but it would have been easier if I had just been patient and waited in the first place.
Our little cottage is still very much a work in progress, but thank you for letting me share some of the progress with you today!
Thanks for the inspiration! Heading over to Country Mouse Tales to let Bekah know how much I love her floors.
Thank you so much for sharing. It looks wonderful. I’d like to do that in my shop later and I’ll try to listen to you and be very patient!
Thank you so much for featuring my floors!!
You are most welcome, Bekah!
Be Kay. This is such a stupid question. But here goes. How or where does one save/store blogs so the most ones of interest are not forgotten? Want to continue to read yours. Thanks so very much. Barb
Should have come up as Becka
Hi Barbara,
Not a stupid question at all! You can bookmark it in your browser (the steps to doing that depend on your browser), or you can follow on a social media such as Facebook, or you could use a feed reader, which is a program you set up with your favorite blogs and it automatically checks the blogs you indicated for new content and shows it to you (either on the website or by using an app on your phone or tablet). Or, for Remodelaholic, we also offer an email subscription, where you can sign up to get new emails — https://www.remodelaholic.com/email-newsletter/
Have a great day!
Sweet blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo
News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News?
I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Appreciate it
That’s great that you found us. Cassity use to write for Yahoo, maybe that is how we got there, I am not sure.
Those floors are just beautiful and now I know what I’m going to do with our utility room floor (that I’ve hated for years) Thanks so much Remodelaholic and Country Mouse Tales for this fab idea. Off to see what other ideas Country Mouse has for me!!
Marie:-)
Thanks for the comment, Marie! Happy browsing 🙂
I am getting ready to do my back patio and my front porch and my walkway to my front porch. I bought a brick stencil on ebay and I am planning on doing this soon. The only problem, every time I ask someone what to do, I always get a different answer. I would like to know if it is alright, after I cleaned the concrete floor with bleach and scrubbed it good, can I now start painting as I want to use the grout of the concrete, then I plan to paint my stencil brick red to match my brick on one wall. I talked to someone last night and they said that is all I needed to do to my concrete. What do you say? Since I wasn’t planning on doing anything else, do you think that my concrete paint will stay as I do not want it to peel at all. When I do it, I want it to be nice and stay nice for a very long time, so I need your advise, please.