Taking a Floor Up A Notch(es)!

We are taking the shop floor up a few notches with Chalk Paint® decorative paint by Annie Sloan® as well as Annie's Lacquer for floors! I wanted a vintage look, old and imperfect and that is what we have! I'm loving it and so do our customers.

We've only finished a little over 200 of the 1900 SF so far, but there will be other techniques in areas. The workshop/classroom floor area gets a lot of random painting, if you know what I mean -- LOL. So we may be looking at a splatter effect there so that the next time I drop an open can of paint you will hardly notice! (Yep, it does happen.)

I chose what was supposed to be a blizzard day for this project. Of course, the meteorologists were somewhat wrong and we had record weekday sales that day -- go figure! But the customers just worked their way around the misplaced furniture and tiptoed around the wet paint! Thank you all for your understanding.

First was to clean the already sealed floor. I chose to have that honey khaki color show through a rolled layer of French Linen as I wanted some dimension to the floor. This happened with darker and lighter areas of paint.

Remember those old plastic lace table cloths your grandma had. I had found one some time ago at a garage sale for a dollar or two. I've use parts of it as a stencil for a number of furniture projects, but never the entire thing. So here we go with a roller and Graphite!

I worked my way with the roller around the tablecloth. I was not concerned about even coverage or if I went over the edge. It was meant to look old and irregular. Then I overlapped just ever so little one stenciled area to the next.

I was thinking awesome. I must admit I loved how this was working out! I must warn you that after this many "circles" the tablecloth gets pretty heavy and messy with residue paint. It starts becoming sticky -- so 200 SF is about the limit or you need to rinse it off after a while. I managed to complete the whole area I had cleared for that day. Final step -- to coats of Lacquer rolled on with time to dry in between. The lacquer comes in liters and should be poured out into another container and stirred before putting into a roller pan. I used one of those oval plastic ice cream containers which works great and can be sealed up with the lid if you don't use it all!

 

You need to allow the floor to dry overnight before walking on it. I found it best to wear socks rather than shoes when applying the second coat so I didn't pull up any paint and lacquer from the first coat with my tennies. The test of this floor came over the weekend when water came into the shop from the floor above. Although water sat on parts of the floor, it held up fine. In the future I will simply clean it with a swifter! I have also painted and lacquered our wood laminate floor in our home powder room and it is working perfectly after many months!

 

This project took two quarts of French Linen, one quart of Graphite and a little over two liters of Lacquer.