#Slice2013 - Day 17 of 31

You started with this:

I'm a completely move-in ready room!

But thought to yourselves, "Selves? Could this be better?"

And of course the answer was, "Heck yeah!"

So you got the right tools...

And did this:

With a little water, removing popcorn texture is super easy.

But was that enough? Heck no!
You needed more awesome for this room.
So you tore up the carpet and The Husband busted loose all the tack strip:

I think the curtains really make a difference at this point, don't you?

 Tearing up a room makes a mess, so you make sure to wear a fancy pink dust mask, as seen here:

I'm ready for house renovating and the end of the world. What now??

 It's important to wear your mask when you use the shopvac to get all the nasty dust, texture, and sanding residue off the floor. Notice even the curtains had to back out at this point. This procedure is not for the faint of heart. You will get dirty. You might cough and hack and think you're dying (but only if you're overly dramatic, which I am, so you can imagine what The Husband had to deal with!)

And don't forget to fill in all those dumb holes you made when you pulled up the carpet! Oddly, when your house was built, no one ever thought you'd actually want to remove the carpet or do anything like this. You'll need some Quickcrete and a 4" inch painter's blade to splat that stuff in there:

At this point, you're probably thinking you're done! Afterall, you've already been working on this room for over a week, and all the other blogs you've read did their room in a weekend...

Jokes on you! You are not done. Sanding and use of deadly chemicals did not remove all the paint and glue off your concrete, so your floor still looks like this:

This means it's time to break out the big guns, baby. Head to Home Depot and get a Diamond bladed concrete grinder. If you rent it after 6pm on a Friday night and return it at 9am the next morning, you only have to pay the 4 hour rental fee. Winning!

Once again, you'll be very happy you have those industrial dust masks!

When you finish slamming the concrete grinder off the walls and spinning around like a hummingbird, which will only take an hour or so, your floor will look like this:

Hi. I am the paint near the baseboards. I can outlive anything. I laugh at your floor project dreams! Ha!

Eventually you decide the paint around the baseboards will add a vintage look, and you move on.

Wash wash wash wash your floor, and vac vac vac vac vac it up. Then do it again. If you are heavy on the OCD, run a white glove over the surface and check for residue. Once you believe it's clean enough for people to eat off of, it's time to roll on the primer! We used all Behr products, because that's what the good folks at Home Depot sold us.

It's okay to weep with joy as you finally turn the corner and start the staining portion of your project!

Once the primer dries, you're ready to get that floor stained! The can of stain tells you to use a sprayer to apply the stain. So you do.

Note the sexy "booties" we wore to keep the floor clean. I am not joking about keeping this floor clean, you guys.

After spraying down the floor in your chosen stain color of "Coal Dust" or "Dusty Coal" or whatever crazy name Behr's uses for black, you walk away to let it dry. You walk away, even though your brain is thinking, "Um, that doesn't look exactly how I thought it would..."

Am I a floor, or a speckled egg?

Maybe I am hipster leopard print?

After the stain dries, you sit down on the floor and have a little pity party. This is not what you wanted. You decide to paint on the second coat, then use a "ragging off" method with some scrunched up cloths to fill in all those speckles...

You spend the day painting the floor, feeling like a home remodeling superstar.

In the end, however, you question your decision. Couldn't it be darker? Wouldn't that be better?

Yes, you decide. Yes, it would.

So you test out several spray patterns using water on the sidewalk. Your new neighbors may look at you strangely, wondering why you water the sidewalk and not the grass. Don't mind them. They obviously aren't remodeling superstars like you are. 

When you are confident of your new-found spraying prowess, you take a third spin on that floor.

Hallelujah bells! We have a winner!

Close-up for the new beauty queen.

And again, you wait for it to dry. Hopinghopinghoping it doesn't all somehow get sucked up into the concrete and turn into something different.

But all your hard work pays off.

You have a floor.

Which, to be honest, you had in the beginning of all this nonsense.

This floor is just more awesome.

Just the way you like things.

All I need is a couple coats of shiny sealer, and I'm good to go!