Painted Floor

I have always been a fan of painted floors, especially the distressed ones or the ones painted solid white.  When we first walked into this house all I could see was the extremely dark woodwork and the old stained carpet....everywhere.  It was awful. 

 I told my husband that I did not want to live on this carpet even for a second.  Thankfully he understood.  So on move-in day all of the carpets were removed before we brought anything into the house.  Now that is something I was very thankful for.  We had lots of people from church helping so  the carpet was out very quickly.  Sadly, this house was not graced with hardwood floors when it was built in 1978.  So....plywood floors have been our floors for the past year.  

I wanted one room where we could all go and hang out that at least felt finished or mostly finished.  So in our family room I decided to distress the plywood floor.  Having never done this, it was a 'go for it and see what happens' DIY project.  This is the room before the carpet was removed.  You can see the stains and how dingy the carpet was.

This is the room once the carpet was removed and painting had begun.  You can see the plywood floor in the corner.

This is the floor after the plywood was painted to resemble distressed barn wood. The furniture is all pushed into a corner since I worked on one section at a time, moving the furniture around as I went.

What do you think?  I have to say we really like it.  It feels smooth like hard wood and is definitely a conversation piece.  People are surprised when I tell them what it is.  Here's the method I used:

I started by painting the floor a dark grey brown color with floor paint from our local Benjamin Moore store that I had custom matched to the color of the muntins or grids in our casement windows.  Then I took Dove White floor paint and dry brushed it on top of the darker color.  Next, I sanded and sanded and sanded until I achieved the look I wanted.  The last step was to coat the floor in water-based polyurethane.  That's it!!

Looking back I might have done it a bit differently but for now it has given us a great floor that is washable and beautiful!  So until we install hard wood, which I am excited to say has actually begun in the front of the house, this will work just fine for us!