Paint floor renovation

As usual the hoopla happens here at the last minute. We expect guests for Thanksgiving, so there has been a bevy or projects happening that have been ignored or put aside. We have the grossest floors you have ever seen. They show every one of their 140 years. They rise and fall like roller coasters. They have as many curves as Marilyn Monroe. They have as many holes in them as a victim of Al Capone.

The holes in the floor range from simple tackless carpeting strip nail holes, to huge inch and a half holes from overzealous plumbers installing heating apparatus. The holes are really anxiety producing as I mentally concoct scenarios of huge bugs or persistent snakes coming through the floors while I sleep. Drama is unfortunately always the center of what goes on in this house! But we had a big improvement over the last few days. Mr didn't even do it. He is usually the star of the drama productions here, but this time he is not. This dramatic change is a decor change, not a structural change. Anything structural is he. This is a visual change. A change in ambiance.

Brown disgusting, peeling paint, chewed up damaged floors have been the anchor of all of our rooms. Things are changing. They are not changing to the beautiful, grained cherry hardwood floors I would choose, but a good change no less. The floors are getting lighter and cleaner and any movement in that direction is a good thing. It started upstairs in the hallway, and what a trial that was! In addition to a trial it was a life lesson in how to do it and not do it. This actually helps the situation. Getting everything you can out of the room to paint  the floor...a good thing. Having to paint around furniture, a bad thing...but if it is the only way to do it or it will not get done...paint around the furniture! A new coat of paint on the floor can not be praised too highly. It can change the whole feeling of your room, and the feeling in your heart.

Buying the materials for cherry floors, no less than $3000. Painting wood floors already in the house, no more than $300. That is a big difference. The look is different, the feeling of the room is different...much for the better either way. Is it likely there will be scratches and paint chipping on the painted floor? Yes, it is likely.  Is it still worth it to do it? The answer to this question is a resounding YES! The place still looks a thousand percent better with the lighter color painted floors, and they are not even done yet. They still need another coat or two over the next two days, and experience has taught me that a triple coat of Polycrylic over the paint helps ward off chipping and gives the floor a nice clear coat on top. The clear coat feels good under the feet when walking barefoot, it actually resembles normal hardwood floors! Since we are having company for Thanksgiving, the clear coat is going to have to wait and will happen after the holidays I think. This way the paint can cure a bit (this helps it to harden up and set) and there will be no more furniture moving until there is no entertaining on the horizon.

Here are some preliminary pictures of what it looked like before and what it looks like as it is painted so far. I think it will look a lot better in another day or two after two more coats of paint. The brown floors were difficult to cover with beige paint. It takes at least three coats to cover and in some places even more than that!

These photos show what I started with brown, and raw floors. Every room had a raw center where the floor was never painted. I guess previous residents painted around rugs or linoleum, creating the void in the paint. It was tempting to think about sanding the floors and finishing them. Mr insisted tht this was not possible under any circumstances. Yes, we really have lived with this disgusting floor. Mr is worried about structure, not decor. This is not a man's priority.

The picture below is pretty typical surface detail. Most of this floor was peeling and needed to be scraped with appropriate measures taken to control what was scraped off. If you paint over loose paint it will flake off under stress because it is not adhered to the floor, even a new coat of paint will not glue it to the floor if it is loose. If it is still adhered, a new coat of paint does adhere to the floor and though the surface may be rough, it can still be acceptable to live with if you are not a "smooth freak". A smooth freak is some one who has to have a pristine smooth surface, no matter what work is involved with making it smooth. For me, good enough is good enough and clean and bright is a big improvement over brown muddy and peeling. So a bit of tooth in the paint finish is acceptable. That is the "charm" you have to accept when living in an old house. If you can't stand it, old houses are not for you!

This is a typical raw spot from previous paint jobs. I hated covering the grain in the floor, but I was assured that there was no way to make these floors better, they are very soft. Some of the areas of the floor had huge gouges out of them from I can't imagine what, and that would not have sanded out. So after much arguing, paint was the only option...we now have a painted floor!

This shows some of the multiple colors and layers visible on the living room floor. At one time it was a pink, another a black or gray, and another the raw and the brown. None were acceptable to my aesthetic. What was acceptable? After consultation with my "design team" I was discouraged from choosing white. I selected beige, Mellow Suede was the exact color name. It proved to be a very yellowy beige which when put on the floor looked much more like off white than beige. It is not the color I thought I would get, but it is okay. After finishing the upstairs a painting a clerk at Lowes told me "you can have that paint any color on those racks over there, not just the samples on the folder"...this did not make me happy since half of the job was done already. So be it. It is not getting changed. The off white does make the place a lot brighter, and a lot less depressing. Even the yellow tone to the beige is acceptable, it warms the place up a bit and takes well to lighting, meaning that it reflects a lot of light and the ambient light in the room has increased. That is always a good thing in my measure. Here are some photos of the floor in process. As you can see the furniture is piled in one section of the room and the room will have to be painted in sections. Roughly three quarters of the room is painted at once and then the other quarter will be painted once the three quarters is dry and can have furniture moved onto it.

 It should be mentioned that the old paint seems to absorb a lot of the new paint, that is part of the reason why three coats are needed. When I called Valspar to ask if primer needed to be put down before painting the floor they said no. I assume that is because this porch and floor paint becomes its own primer by being absorbed. It was of no consequence to us. The primer and the Valspar Porch and Floor paint cost the same, and the floor paint is the color we want, so it has not been an issue at all in other than planning the amount of paint needed to cover the floors. So, one must plan for absorbed paint in the purchase of paint if buying it all at once. This has been an "Oh we need more" sort of experience for us, since we have never had painted floors before. That can be a problem as we live 25 miles from the store! I have to go out and get some more tomorrow, can three was finished today.