Faux Flagstone(ish) Bathroom Floor

Okay y'all, it seems like people are wanting to know how I did this, so here's a quick rundown. After all, part of my reason for sharing is so you can go and do it too!

Here is the floor I started with:

 

 

 

Hello ugliness. I would not be at all surprised if this floor was at least 50 years old. That being said, it's in surprisingly good shape (no major gouges, holes, scratches, etc). 

 This is the floor I had planned on purchasing. It's a sheet vinyl type of thing and it would have cost about $100 to do the whole room.  Not bad for flooring. 

Then, I started working on the cupboard doors and discovered they were pretty tight with the floor. Then, my hubby pointed out to me to put in new flooring, we would need to pick up and go under the toilet. 

Ugh, that was so not going to happen anytime soon. 

I had pretty good luck with sponge painting a concrete basement floor in our old house, so I started thinking more about doing that on this one. Plus, my hubby was going to be out of town for a few days, which is always a good opportunity to spend some time on a project that will otherwise inconvenience him (i.e not being able to use the downstairs bathroom for a couple of days : ) )

First, I gave it a quick sand. I recently discovered you can use steel wool to do this. Apparently this is nothing new, just new to me. 

Then I put on a coat of primer. I always use either the Zinnser FastPrime2 or Bullseye 123 (both from Menards).

Next I added a couple coats of some Porch & Floor Paint, tinted to a sand type color. After letting that dry a day or two, I used some really skinny painter's tape to tape off the pattern. It looks complicated but it was pretty simple, I just kept adding random lines. I think it took me less than an hour to get it all taped.

 

Finally, the sponging part. The blog I read used polyurethane mixed with paint. With wanting such a dark color, that really didn't work for me, it was way too thin. Good thing I started in the closet. 

When I did this the first time in my basement, I used two lighter taupe colors of paint mixed with glaze. For either the polyurethane or the glaze, you mix 4 parts glaze with 1 part paint. So for example, for every cup of glaze you mix 1/4 cup of paint in, or for a smaller batch, use 4 T glaze with 1 T paint. I just use some sort of tubberware container to mix it in. That worked pretty well on that one.

For this floor, to get the darker color, I used the same paint I used on our bedroom floor (and living room wall) and simply sponged it on. I use a sea sponge, which can be found at Menards in the paint section with the rollers. They are a little pricey, like $8, but you can use it over and over again, and cut it into pieces so you have more than one. 

Next, while it was still wet, I sponged on two more colors of the paint mixed with glaze. I used a separate smaller sponge to put it on and only put a little bit on in various places then sponged over it with the sponge I was using for the darker color. That made it blend in quite a bit so there was only a little bit of color in the darker one. If you were doing something not quite as dark, I would mix all the paint colors with glaze rather than sponging on straight paint. The whole sponging thing is pretty forgiving, if you don't like how it looks just keep adding more or less of certain colors to get the look you want. (You can also try out your colors beforehand to make sure you like the way it looks, but I'm more the wing it type)

 

Finished floor. I still have to go back and fill in some of the lines where the paint bled onto the faux grout lines, plus put some sort of protectant like polyurethane over it to seal it. Since it's a bathroom and inevitably will get wet, that's a fairly critical step. I didn't do that in the basement and the paint peeled off in several places. 

That's it! In all, it probably took me a couple hours to do the sponging part. 

Happy painting!