Hey everyone! Before I get started with the reason for this blog today, I wanted to share a bit about our story of buying a house here in North Carolina.
In 2016 we moved down to North Carolina in an area that was growing pretty fast. There were tons of new developments getting built, new houses all over and we knew that in order for us to buy a house, we needed to do it soon. We decided shortly after, that we were going to put a deposit down on a brand new house in a beautiful development. It was going to take some time to be built. During that time my hubby decided he wanted to look at different options. He wasn’t too happy to be in a neighborhood with an H.O.A and wanted to have some more property than we were getting. Reluctantly, I went along to look at some other options.
Long story short, a lot of the houses were over budget or already had offers on them. Then we found our house! A 1972 complete fixer upper. When we walked in, my hubby was sold. It had so much potential, more square footage, more property, and no H.O.A. We came back once more before we decided to put in an offer on it. We were nervous, scared, terrified even, but we knew we had to take it on. We found out we got it and quickly cancelled our contract on the brand new house. I have to say it was a huge decision, but I can say now that we made the right one for our family.
So after the whole process, we knew some things needed to be redone on a very strict budget. Insert redoing our master bathroom here. I will show you some scary pictures here… 1970’s style blue and white Master Bathroom! I needed to figure out how to renovate this room without tearing it apart. That will be a project we want to complete in a few years. But in the meantime I did not want to live in the 70’s style bathroom. So I needed to find a way to do it and after doing a little bit of research, I found out I could chalk paint tile. LIGHT BULB moment. I was going to paint the tiles and seal the floors to make a huge difference in this room.
Now our bathroom was ceramic tile, however I have heard and seen many people do this on linoleum floors and wood/laminate floors too.
Here is what you will need to transform your room-
- Cleaner and rag
- Chalk paint (we used Waverly chalk paint from Walmart. In the craft section)
- Paint roller
- Paint brush
- Sanding block or sandpaper
- Minwax polycrylic or sealer of choice
So here is how we did it…
The first thing you want to do is to sweep/vacuum and scrub the floors very very good. You really need to be good about getting every nook and cranny cleaned using a good cleaner. I used 409 to clean ours.
Then you want to start painting. We have tile halfway up our walls so I started with those first. Since I was painting them white and they were quite dark to begin with, it took me about 3 full coats to cover. It was time consuming but well worth it! Once they were done, I moved onto the floor. Chalk paint dries pretty quickly which is great for painting the floors. I was able to roll on one full coat, let it dry for about an hour and then do a second coat. Our floors only took 2 coats. The most time consuming part was around the edges and having a steady hand to do it. You could always use painters tape too but I did not have any and did it free hand.
Once you are done painting, you want to let it completely dry. I would say give it at least an hour, but I would say 2 hours would be best. Then you want to go ahead and seal it. In my research and in my opinion, polycrylic is the best option. It is a water based sealer that works so well. It is not supposed to yellow the color especially if you choose to do white paint. It is very durable and a great option for a floor even in high traffic areas. It also has different finishes. I chose the Matte option.
So go ahead and start rolling the polycrylic on and do a very light coat. You do not want to go to heavy at all. Make sure you have a ventilated area and may even want to run a fan on it. We had the window open and fan on to help circulate the air. Once your first coat is completely dry, you want to lightly sand it down and apply a second coat. I honestly did not sand mine. I am terrible at following direction, but my floors still came out great! I would recommend doing it only because I have heard that bubbling may happen if you do not sand it down a bit. You will want to sand down in between each coat. For a floor I would highly reccommend doing at least 3 coats of polycrylic. The more coats, the better protected it will be.
I will have to say that even after a year of living here, our floors are holding up pretty well! The only real issue I have had is when I dyed my hair, the dye did not easily wipe up off the floor so I had to touch it up with a little patch of paint and polycrylic and it is back to normal. I love the way this transformed the room. What a difference it has made! I would recommend this to anyone who wants a pretty quick transformation without having to tear their bathroom apart and not spend a lot of money. I think the total bathroom renovation cost us about $50. with all of the materials. If you try this, you have to let me know! I would love to hear about it and see pictures of your transformation.
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