Wood Grain Stained Concrete!

Yep! Stained Concrete!

     I may have said this before about other projects in this house, but I am saying it again here..... This may be my favorite thing so far!  Shipp did an amazing job with the feather finish - It's amazing the  difference it makes in a room! I posted previously about this miracle stuff - Ardex feather finish.

   So, here is the feather finish (left) and with the base coat (right). Pardon the toilet hole... not sure of the technical term to use, but that's the nicest thing I can come up with (blah!). I used Valspar semi-transparent concrete stain in driftwood, which is what I used in the rest of the house.  I just rolled it on with a paint roller.

   I used Valspar semi-transparent concrete stain in ember for the darker grain top coat. I is kind of a dark cool gray with a hint of deep blue - I love this color! I picked up a graining tool from Lowes. It is a funny looking little piece of magic! I have no idea how this thing makes wood grain, but it is awesome. 

* Important tip - use Valspar mixing glaze to thicken the stain. I used an entire jar which is about 1 pint of glaze with about 1 1/2 cups of stain. I love mixing glaze because you can mix it with any paint to make it more workable for faux finishes.

   You work in small areas, 2-3 feet at a time. Spread a thin layer of glaze/stain mix then drag the tool from one end to the other rocking it slowly from back to front to back. You can add variation to this of coarse, to get the desired look. The glaze allows some working time, so if you don't like that pass, just use your brush and spread it back out and try again.

   I will warn you, this is a very tedious process. The tool is only about 2 3/4 inches wide. You have to use short passes so it does not flood the tool and make a mess. You have to wipe it off in between passes and transitions are difficult. You can blend them with the tooth edge or a cheap throw away brush works OK also. This is a small area so it wasn't too bad, it took me about an hour.

  

   I'm planning to wood grain the entire master bedroom floor because I love it so much and I just can't live without it! I don't care how long it takes!



Progress report

Last week was a very productive week for me, but that's about it.... my entire crew was sick! My sugar has pneumonia and is just now able to get through the day without fever. Poor Shipp has has gastroenteritis and an ear infection.  Somehow me and the girls made it out unscathed, thankfully. I did get to catch up on some painting and do some decorating. And we are finally ready to make the big move! The great thing about this move, which is totally different from any other time I have ever moved (and I've moved an awful lot in my life) is that we don't really need to pack everything carefully.  It's only going 10 miles so we can make as many trips as it takes. It's not really worth the effort to wrap and box everything neatly for such a short trip. I swear I thought we would move everything here one piece at a time according to necessity before we made it to this day....

The house is not finished yet, though. I still need to paint the floor in the girls' bathroom (which I can't do until we have another bathroom to use), stain the floor in the kitchen, master and mud/laundry room (floors are last), paint my closet (on my list this week), paint mud room/laundry room (no idea what to do yet), we have to finish the master bathroom (tile is underway), countertops  (next on list) and hang trim and base. Wow. All of the sudden I don't feel like I got as much done last week as I should have.....

I repainted the soffit in the kitchen. I don't know what I was thinking when I picked that other color!  I love the new color so much I used the extra paint in my tray to color wash the wall between the kitchen and dining area.  It's only about 3 ft wide and will eventually have the breakfast bar made of reclaimed wood attached where the lighter colored wood is. It was kind of scary to start, just knowing it wouldn't be easy to reverse if we didn't like it, but it really looks good.

I used about 3 to 1 parts satin finish latex paint (sorry, I can't remember the color, all I got was a sample) and water in my paint pan. I used a cheap brush to apply a few strokes of paint in about a 3 square foot area and rubbed it in with a wet paper towel and spread it evenly going with the grain. There is a rectangular section that needs some work where there used to be a phone mounted to the wall which left the wood lighter than the rest, and the part where the bar used to be attached and will be covered by the new bar soon. I love it!

Kitchen cabinets are painted - thank God.  Just need to rehang a few doors. I picked up some trim to try out adding to the door and drawer faces. It does need the crown at the top which will be one of the last things. 

Tile is looking amazing!

The Princess's Bedchamber

This is the before picture of the girls' room. I've never seen grooves so deep in paneling before like what's in this house! I floated the room a couple of times with joint compound and sprayed kilz on ceiling and walls. Then I rolled texture on and painted the room grey. I felt like the needed some color in there so I had David pick up some turquoise paint - he did pretty good!

This is before we did the floor.

The. First picture above is the floor after Shipp (our carpenter extraordinaire!) Floated the feather finish layer of concrete.  It is almost the same color as the stain I picked out! We decided to go ahead and stain it the same color anyway to give it a more finished appearance.  The second and third are after the sealer was applied. Can't wait to get the trim and moulding on and start decorating in here!

Concrete floor MASTERS!

I got to stain the concrete floor in the living room! I really love how it turned out.  We originally planned to scrape and sand of mastic off of the concrete from the original vinyl tile, but our carpenter suggested a feather finish layer of concrete. He floated two layers (during and sanding between layers) and it looked amazing even before the stain. The color of the finish was almost exactly like the color of stain I picked out, which was Valspar semi-transparent concrete stain in driftwood. So David put the first coat of stain, driftwood, on the floor and about 4 hours later it was dry enough to walk on without shoes. I used a darker color - vaquero for the second coat and applied it with a texture sponge roller.