Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Bathroom Project: Painting Linoleum/Vinyl Floors


After our gallery wall success and due to unemployment I became what I would call "project happy" at the house.  Crusing Pinterest one Sunday over coffee I spotted two tutorials that involved painting floors.  This one was about painting linoleum/vinyl floors and I got my pattern idea from this tutorial where tile was painted rather than linoleum/vinyl. I had a long debate on stipes vs something more complex and in the end I am glad I went with the x design in the second tutorial. If you are low on time I recommend stripes. I'm not really big into DIY but figured this was a good project for an unemployed gal. Seeing as how I am still not finished I guess it is a good project.  Too bad I start work on Monday and don't have time to finish it this weekend. Oops. 



Taping off baseboards for initial coat of primer after I de-glossed the floors.




Primer coat one. Note: this was a porous surface which makes it a challenge to paint. I didn't spend time trying to get my two coats of primer even before trying the white floor paint coat. This was a mistake. The floor paint was much thinner than the primer and I could still see uneven spots so if you don't want to go back over you work take some time with the primer. 


Started the design with big X in the center. I worked out from each triangle by taping a triangle and taking up every other one. This means the tape does the measuring for you. Pretty genius. Thanks Retropolitan tutorial. 



Rocky was supervising. 


Finally all taped up. It really wasn't as horrendous as I thought it would be. Kind of therapeutic. 


I decided to use satin floor paint from Sherwin Williams in Naval. Big fan of this if you are searching for an awesome navy color. Notes: my first coat was done by brush because I had so many edges and a toilet to paint around. My second and touch up coats were done with a small foam roller which I found to be an excellent material to use with satin paint. The coats where I used the roller went very fast (finally!). 


Issues: peeling up the tape was very tricky. I had a lot of bleeds -- again expected issues due to a porous surface. They are hard to see in the photo but if you came over you would see I need a hard day of touch ups with my white paint. And some with the Naval paint color. 


All in all I'm not sorry I did the project. It will take a few days if you work or even if you don't because you obviously have to let the floor dry every time you paint it because you must walk on it again to do a new coat. All that's left after I touch up is to seal it and it was cheap while also worth the effort to camoflauge the linoleum floor. Lord know why I tiled my master bathroom when I had this town home built and left this one off? How much more could it have been to tile this small area?!  

What projects are you into this Spring?

-the single gal-


2 comments:

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  2. Thank you for the step by step process you took to get amazing looking floors. I wish I was as talented as you are, and was able to do something like this. Maybe I will have to check and see if my brother would be willing to help me. HE is the DIY master in the family, so this looks like it is right up his alley. http://cloudcarpet1.com/vinyl/

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