#Slice2013 - 11 of 31

The High Cost of Prepping and Staining a Concrete Floor

I wish I had taken the time to count hours and money spent on this floor. I'd love to look back and say, "Man, that 383 hours preparing the floor was totally worth it!"

But the truth is, I have just a rough idea of how long we've been butting our heads against concrete while throwing cash in the air:

• Two hours ripping up carpet and tack strip. ($0!)
• Two hours filling holes with Quickcrete and sanding the patches. ($5)
• Three hours sweeping and vacuuming and scraping away at glue and paint. ($25 for mostly useless paint stripper!)
• Four hours to use the huge concrete grinder and vacuum up the mess it left. ($100!! Eek!)
• Five hours to scrape up more paint around the baseboards, then scrub the entire floor by hand and vacuum up the insane amounts of water that -- the whole time -- I was thinking this is a very bad idea. ($0!)
• Four hours spent scrubbing, mopping, and vacuuming both floors until they were smooth and as paint-free as they are going to ever be. ($0 but so much freaking out about the amount of water sloshing around on the floor!)
• One hour priming both floors. ($25ish?)
• 15 minutes spraying on the first coat of stain in the boys' room. ($25)

And that's where we are so far. Yes, I finally have some stain on a floor! It's a miracle! No, seriously guys, it's a miraculous feeling to be on this side of the floor project. I still need to buy the stain for the other room - two colors so a total of $50. And the low gloss sealer, which I believe is $25. So, total cash-dollah cost to redo both floors is coming in right around $255, give or take a few. The man power and muscle put into this craziness has been much more exhausting than the money spent. And I've yet to get into the other room and start hand painting the harlequin pattern. I'm actually pumped to do that. Now that we've opened one can of the stain and I know what I'm working with, I have a much better idea of how to paint it on the other floor.

After we sprayed the first coat on tonight, it definitely left a mottled appearance as it was supposed to, but I'm not sure that spraying a second coat will fill in the patchy spots to my liking. Instead, I'm going to roll on small sections and then use a rag to splotch it all around. I'm sure there's a much more professional way to explain this process. But that's what I've got: splotching the floors.

I'll be doing that tomorrow morning, and prayingprayingpraying all this hard work pays off. I'm excited. If it works how I'm hoping, we'll have a beautiful glossy black splotched floor in a couple of days. Huzzah!

But for tonight, a bath and some well earned sleep are all I want to think about.