the floor

Right before I started writing this post my computer decided to quit on me. Permanently. The diagnosis:  dead hard drive. With the hard drive went all the pictures for this and for a couple of other posts. Of course we didn’t have any backup. Fortunately we had some photos on our phones, so that will have to do.

We decided to paint our floor white.  First we asked mr. Google how to tackle this. He said that it is quite simple, all you need to have is a paint that is designated for painting floors. Then we asked Slovenian mr. Google and I also looked up on some diy forums. All that came out is that that is impossible and that you have to hire a professional to sand the floors and then apply a lacquer with paint already in it. But the effect that we saw online did not impress us, because the floors were only whitened and not completely white as we wanted. When we asked in some stores about our problem and asked if  we can  paint the floor  with white wood color and then apply lacquer over it. They all said again that that is not possible and the paint will peel over time.

Then we went to Obi to buy some other things and I just went to have a quick look in their color department. There was a nice lady which was very helpful and said that of course they have floor paint! It is a paint based on poly – urethane by Bona. It comes in three colors: white, black and grey. The directions were pretty simple and it even said that the floor doesn’t have to be professionally sanded. We were sold. We bought it and went home happy.

The next day I called reinforcements. My friend Tanja (thanks Tanja and so sorry for the back ache) came to help me with sanding. We chose a sanding paper with a grid of 140.  We sanded it by hand and were done in 2 hours. Now pretend that below is a picture of before and after sanding.  🙂

Then I vacuumed the whole room and wiped it down with a damp cloth. The directions said that you have to apply the color in a thin coat with a brush or with a roller. I chose a roller and went to work. If your floor is untreated you first have to apply a Bona lacquer and then the paint. We already had lacquer on ours. It also said that it needed only 1 or 2 coats to fully cover the old paint. Well… our floors needed 5 coats. I applied it in 12 hour intervals.

On the last day we sanded and painted (5 times!) the skirting boards and Evgen reinstalled them.

So the whole project took us about 5 days and I must say that I love the end result! The paint is quite shiny and it feels like epoxy floors. We’ll see how durable it is with time. For now the paint holds quite well against scratches and doggy nails. The only bad side is that it shows every bread crumb and dog hair that falls on the floor. 🙂 So now I vacuum almost every day to keep it perfectly white. We bought the big canister that was meant for 2 coats  over 24 m². Our kitchen is about 12 m², I did 5 coats, all the skirtings and still had some left.

Did I mention that we looove our new floor? 🙂