friday night? let's start staining the floor...

Yes, I went THERE...left work, came home, and decided what the hell? Let's go for it. We had already made the trip earlier in the week to Home Depot and purchased the stain along with needed supplies. The folks there in the paint department were very helpful and showed us everything we would need based on the state of our concrete.

At first I wanted a "blacker" stain, but my kid (term is used "loosely" she's in college..), who is "all things art", reminded me that our living room tends to have darker lighting and that the black stain would make it worse. So I deferred to her perspective and we ended up picking out a semi-transparent stain from Behr called Chikory. To get a better idea of what the finished product might look like, I Googled some images and found some examples like the one to the left. 

And this one...

Keep in mind that the final effect will largely depend on the condition of the concrete that you are staining, the application method you choose, and the finish you elect to you use. I am just a very visual person and I needed to see a final "final".  

In addition to the stain, we also purchased the Behr masonry/concrete cleaner, rollers, plastic drop cloths, blue painter's tape, and Behr wet look sealer. 

So, at 9 pm on Friday, we started moving furniture back and I mopped the floor with the Behr cleaner, keep in mind that my floor has been covered by laminate wood for the last 9 years, it really was not in bad shape.  As I mopped, "kiddo" followed behind me with the wet/dry shop vac sucking up the nasty water, when I rinsed the floor (twice), we did the same thing again with the wet/dry vac. It really helped with the floor drying quickly so we could proceed with the next steps, taping and draping the walls, I was forewarned that the sprayer used for staining would splatter and that it was good idea to protect the walls at least up six inches from the floor. I really did not worry about the baseboards because we will be painting those as they were pretty beat up to begin with.  

 Here's the floor after mopping it the front of the room and the opposite wall. The floor already has some variation in it that I do like, I even considered just sealing this, but after researching a lot of concrete stained floors on Pinterest and other sites, I decided to go ahead and stain it.  On the advice of my "artistic consultant", aka "kiddo", we decided to do one side of the room and see how it came out before proceeding with the rest of the "commitment". 

One coat of stain.

Glare is from overhead light on wet stain.

This actual space is 18 sq ft X 10 sq ft, the can of Behr stain covers up to 250 sq ft, so we had more than enough for this room and the adjoining hallway, hich is what we planned to stain. 

I admit, I am not the best "taper" and this is the first time I have ever attempted to stain anything other than wood.  So please do not laugh at the "taping"...I did the top part, kiddo did the bottom part. The "prep" work is the most boring part of this type of project IMO, I am not a patient person with stuff like this, which is why some "folks" were not thrilled at my late night diy hyperactivity.

It was pretty late on Friday night when we were at this point, which was coat number one. I already had a plastic sprayer that you manually pump, so that is what I used, also had the paint roller holder from previously painting a bedroom. I sprayed in a back and forth swirly kinda motion and kiddo rolled in a varying "swirling" motion following behind me.  NOTE: BEFORE you start spraying, make sure you remember to start at the front of the space and work your way out so you do not "paint yourself into a corner", leave an escape route.  Where gloves, this stuff is messy, but it is a soap and water clean up.

In the pic above, the stain is still wet and the "shine" is the glare from the overhead lighting.  I figured we would get this one coat down and in the morning I could decide if we needed two coats or not. The more coats the darker the outcome and I have to state that I love texture and variation, I like the imperfectness of concrete. I like things with age, history, a story to tell.  So I "embraced" this and went to sleep...I'll share the next post soon.