My last update on cement floor staining

So we finished the other half of the floor in our downstairs and I have some more things to recommend that I learned.

First---what I did different in the second room.
Instead of (per manufacturer directions) just putting on the stain and leaving it to dry randomly, I went back in and re-spread it after it was about half dry. Using an old broom that we had originally spread it around with I pushed the still wet spots around until the floor was again evenly covered and wet with stain. Then allowed it to dry all the way. In the end I think I got a slightly less mottled look than I did in the other room----a bit smoother and more consistent. I like it better personally.

Second--what I read after we did the first room and I would like to pass on.
Wet your floor down first---lightly. Not only does it allow more time to move around the stain before you get a "dry line" but it also supposedly reduced "blotchy-ness" I can see that it might have helped us to do that as we have a few spots were we can tell it was the specific spot were the stain was poured onto the floor. Another way to reduce "pour edge" is to use a sprayer---all plastic one---which we did not have. We could have done both these things in the second room but I wanted the two rooms to at least somewhat resemble each other so we didn't.

Anyway---as I said I am happy with the look but I now know a few things I would do differently the next time IF I did not want the same look. I will say for sure that if we decorated in the southwestern or rustic style, I would absolutely do it exactly as I did it this time. For a more modern look----I think I would apply the new things I learned when doing it this time like the water and the sprayer and re spreading halfway through.

Finished (with part 1)

So here is our floor completely finished with 3 coats of "wet look sealer" on it. Pretty nice. I still feel it's just a bit too dark but....I am much happier with it sealed.
You can see it on the one side of the room with the tan sofa on it and the other (slightly more mottle side) of the room gives a different perspective. I had to work so that the windows didn't show in the floor pictures. They are so shiny their like dark mirrors almost. (Dusting may be an annoying issue in the future......)
Overall it's MUCH better than what we had. The sealer is great even though I make dusting comments---so glossy and silky underfoot. Before it always felt, no matter how clean the floor was, that your feet were dirty and you needed to scrub them off before getting into bed. Now, they don't at all. Wonderful. I think I am almost more impressed with the sealer rather than the stain :-D
Now---we are moving all the furniture into that room and are going to finish the other half. We still need to caulk some molding on the ceiling, paint the whole thing, sand and clean off gunk on the floor then we will be ready to stain and seal again. Really this part is the quickest part. It sounds as if it will take a while but the caulking is almost done (just a few spots where so much furniture was stacked from the other room I couldn't get to the spots)and painting will only take a couple hours. The floor clean up will be a few hours too. No big deal. By next week---voila! A whole brand new downstairs. Yeah!
Then of course I need curtains, new headboard, rugs, pictures hahahaaha Never ending!! But at least that's the "funner" part that includes shopping and much less manual labor!!

We've already been asked a number of times about this since we started if others can do it and my answer is: Yes, it is easy. Yes, overall it looks good and Yes, even the most basic of "beginner" home remodeler can handle this project.
As I said---start with your garage floor (which is what I should have done) to kind of "learn" your stain. I think overall it will give that small bit of practice first. The cost is negligible. Every bit of this project is cheap. I have maybe $100 invested in the part I have done. That includes everything from sand paper to scraping tools to a new roller, dye and sealer. Definitely one of the cheaper projects with great impact. If you make your own stain using the link from the other day (or find another site) it would be even cheaper. I would absolutely practice on my garage with home made stain just to make sure it was going to end up being the color I thought it was though.

Thanks Robbyn for the nice comment :-)
By the way I like your new header picture---very attractive and almost the same color as my floor!

Have a great day all.

cement sealing

So as a continuation of our cement staining saga I will explain how we have proceeded from where I left off.

After allowing the floor to dry---some spots took longer than others---we did as the manufacturer suggested and scrubbed the floor with a stiff brush and clear water. Following with a wet vac and sucking up the dirty water. You can supposedly mop up the watery filth---but I don't recommend it. We just happen to own a wet vac but if you didn't it would be well worth renting one (or a floor carpet cleaner if you couldn't find a wet vac to rent).

Now to a couple of issues. I personally like a mottled look however some people would consider it to be not mottled but blotchy. Word use depends on your interpretation of the results I think. Anyway---where it puddled the stain did come out darker. It also was darker and lighter depending on wear patterns of our floor. Since it is a 30+ year old floor it is not in as good of shape as a brand new one and there are more "use areas" than a new one would have. I believe that I could go back with a sprayer and hit the lighter spots again if I wanted to make them a bit closer to the darker ones aka less blotchy. I won't however---as I said I like it. It looks a bit like old leather with all the crazing, color differences and the small (but few) cracks.

Secondly---as I wrote the other day I mixed the stain 50/50 with water. I think if I where to do it again I would start with more water. It was a bit darker than I would have originally chosen (too late to change now though) and it would have been easy enough to do a second coat. However I am not unhappy---just wiser if I ever do it again.

Lastly I have included a few pictures of it being sealed today. These pictures are of the first coat of Behr brand masonry sealer high gloss . I purchased it from home depot --about $24 a gallon and I used about 1/2 for first coat on my 24 x 12 foot room. I will put on at least one more coat but I have to let it dry for 4 hours before hand. The blue you see in the picture goes away as the sealer dries---though I worried a bit at first :-)
For this particular "mottled" floor the high gloss looks better and so each following coat will give it slightly more gloss with a maximum of 4 coats per manufacturer. I will do two--maybe 3 coats. We will see---it just depends on how much gloss comes through with each coat.

Overall it has been a cheap and easy way to finish the floor. Especially if like us you can't have carpet for some reason (ours is allergies but moisture or high traffic use also comes to mind). With a bit of practice and experimenting I think I could get much better at it and maybe achieve slightly more interesting and consistent results. A garage comes to mind as a great place to practice if you were so inclined--- then just cover it up with garage paint when your done :-) No one would be the wiser.

Cement staining ---again

So, after some prep work on our old (old old old) stained, paint dripped on, chipped up, bumpy cement floor----we now have put on our first application of concrete stain. (Shown in these pictures about 2 hours after and still drying)

Our prep work consisted of first using a window scraper blade to scrape off loose paint and carpet tack glue that had been dripped onto or applied to the flooring over the years. Then we hand sanded with some sandpaper and some water to keep down dust. We used a 35 grit paper made for a belt sander and a 50 grit disc made specifically for sanding cement counter tops. This helped to get up the rest of the paint and snap lines from old wall placements and some other oddities that wouldn't come off easily. We also had some cement "drips" that left bumps, so we smoothed them down too. Lastly we patched with cement (not concrete) the holes where we had removed nails from old wall sills and carpet tacking. Then we sanded those flush if they weren't already.

Now here are a few things I learned about applying the concrete stain. Yes, it stinks and worse---creates some fumes from the acid reacting to the concrete. So, use a mask suited to this and ventilate well---I didn't this time but will next time. I feel as if I have a bit of a catch in my throat from it--not bad but.... I of course was squatted down using the paint brush and pouring it from the bucket so I think I just got a bit more of it in my face since it fumed for just a bit after pouring. I was much more careful after the first couple of pours but will absolutely use a ventilator next time. Good thing the room wasn't large since it is important not to stop or you can get an very specific line that shows where stopping occurs. Notice the line we chose to stop at in the picture. It is where the sleeping part of our room moves into the sitting area so it was a good spot to stop. (We currently have all the bedroom furniture there so we can only do one section at a time).

Also, they say use an all plastic sprayer to apply it. We did not have one and so we used a paint brush to get up near the edges and an old broom to move the stain around with. As long as you keep a wet edge and a bit of puddling (they say wet---but no puddles) it is not a problem. We didn't have problems with the puddles (see some still in the pics where the floor dips) but they did take longer to dry.
Since I was using the Kemico brand---I mix it 50/50 with water for the first application. I can put on another application if I would like to darken it but I think, even after cleaning it when it dries, I will be happy with the strength of the color. We will then neutralize it with baking soda water and then seal it with something for a shiner look.
Overall---it looks "cooler" than I thought it would. I think I will like it and it does look as if the color matches the slate tile used in our hallway, which is good. If for some reason I decided I don't like it---tiles are in our future.
I will post pics after we seal it so you can see the final results. I think though that it is going to be pretty nice considering we started with such a beat up old floor.

Moving Along with some concrete staining

Sorry to be gone for so long. My computer has been fixed for about a week now---but I developed other interests while waiting for it to work again :-)

As you all know we have been/are remodeling our house. I did finally finish my tile work in my kitchen (including the hundreds of cut tiles---each 3/4") except that it is not grouted. I am still sampling and mixing for the correct color---put off at times as other things intrude. Each time I make a new sample board I have to wait at least one day for the tile mortar to set then I grout and wait another two days for the true color to come out. I need to make another sample board (again) of two or three mini tiles so I can try out some more different proportions of color. As soon as I settle on the right (read perfect) grout color---it won't take long to have a finished product. Yes, I am a bit of a screwball as I search for the "exactly" right thing.

Anyway---as we waited for the new computer parts to arrive and for sample boards to dry we have begun work on our bedroom. The ceiling is painted, the walls are almost finished being painted. One wall is missing it's paint since it is a different color and I forgot to buy it when I was at the paint store. Molding is going up and now I am about to stain the cement floor. Our bedroom is a converted open face basement. It was originally a business in the lower part of our house and had partition walls, millions of phone lines and plugs in the ceilings. It even had a very large non removable "NO SMOKING ALLOWED" sign on the old sliding door. All that is now gone---and looking much nicer I might add even in it's not quite finished state.
Anyway---as I said I am about to stain the concrete floor since we will not (because of allergies) use a wall to wall carpet. We could use tile for a slightly fancier look---but it is not in our budget right now and besides we have always liked the look of stained concrete. Long popular in California and Texas---we were exposed to it long before it became so hot through out the rest of the country and have had many "Stained concrete! I can't imagine not covering it up. Are you sure it will look good?" reactions.
Years ago, during a trip to Texas, I forayed into Dallas and bought Kemiko concrete stain in cola (scroll down to see colors) in anticipation of this time. Lately however, I was thinking I might like to add a bit of randomness to the color and, since it is very expensive (because of the danger) to ship acid stain chemicals through the mail---I searched for sites on making my own. The shipping cost can almost double the price since they are considered hazardous chemicals.
Here is one site on concrete staining: my search term was "homemade concrete stain"
There are other links and sites than just that one of course. Hope this helps some others get some ideas and maybe save some money. I will eventually show finished pics---please have patience since I do the work as time and finances are available (I do always finish though!)

Glad to be back---hope everyone is having a good winter.
By the way---it's almost time for PEA PLANTING here!

Concrete Countertops

We have finally gotten around to starting our counter tops. We decided a long time ago (actually many many houses ago) that we would like concrete counter tops. I am posting a few pics to show what is going on. Excuse the last picture since I was playing with the camera and that was not the picture that was suppose to be there. It is a close up of a protruding green glass piece. After a few failed attempts at getting the correct pictures posted----I am accepting this set. The last set had some Xmas party pictures of my husband and I---definitely not counter tops :-) The set before that wouldn't post so anyways.......
The first picture is the cabinet pre-pore with the screen cut for use in the middle of the cement pour to reduce cracking. (The cabinet was actually moved away from the wall and the drawers taken out before we put in the cement). The cabinets all have stainless steel edging to hold in the cement so that we wouldn't have to mess with all of the form work---we decided we would rather have the steel than mess with building wood forms to make the counter top lip. The stainless steel was purchased from a metal company and my husband bent and welded it up to fit each section. He also brushed it so it will match the front of the stove and fridge.
We mixed the bags of 5000psi cement outside in the wheel barrow, adding acrylic water re placer for some of the water (to further reduce any cracking and shrinking) and then took it to the kitchen in a bucket. We poured the first half, laid the screen, then went for the rest of the cement. Before we took the second half to the kitchen, we mixed in some colored glass and rocks (black, blue and green) of various sizes so when we grind the counter to smooth it the glass will show through. Kind of like terrazzo. We actually had some white quartz that we picked up when we went to Arkansas for Thanksgiving for it too----but forgot to crush it and use it. Oh well. The nervousness of doing this made us forget the white stone which was still sitting in a bucket by the front door. One of those duh moments.
The first counter top we did --we mixed the "mixture" way too dry and think we might have to knock it out of the form and re pore it. It is a bit too "dippity" and when we grind it smooth we could have to many dips and waves and holes from the dryness of the mix. It was very difficult to try and smooth out---even when we resorted to spraying it with water to help the cream come up a bit. With the eventual use of a cement slurry to fill in some problem spots (common to all pours), it may still not look the best. In other wards---we think it might be too problematic. But it is only about 9 to 12 dollars worth of material so not really that big of a deal. (except time wise) The other cabinet on the other side of the stove was poured much wetter---we learned our lesson----and came out much much nicer. When we finally grind it it should look good.
We have to wait at least 4 days before we can sand/grind it to polish it but with Christmas coming it might be a bit longer. We won't pour the long sink counter and peninsula before we sand those two to make sure we are happy with the results. Just in case you know. I would hate to have to remove 6 running feet of 2 1/2 deep cement counter top---or the pennisula.
In the picture below the wheel barrow you can kind of see the colored glass if you get real close to the picture LOL. Don't forget your reading glasses.
After the counters are done I can then tile the walls/back splash in the kitchen with some tiles I have to go with the whole thing. I look forward to doing that since I am sick of looking at primed drywall and open plugs in the walls. Sometimes some things fall to the wayside though as more pressing issues come up. We have had "pressing" issues since about the end of August and this has really been the first time we had the mental oomph to work on the kitchen again. Or the time even.
The next issue to work out----can you really grind counter tops in place without making a huge mess?? The books say you can with proper preparation---but I will wait and make up my own mind. I am the clean up person after all--so I WILL know. My husband is tool picker upper and outside cleaner upper. We seem to make BIG messes most of the time so we have divided clean up chores based on who is best at what. I definitely clean up the inside better :-)