Concrete Floor Staining Project

The first big project we tackled in our house was staining the concrete floor in our family room. There was this hideous green carpeting in there, so we knew we wanted to get rid of that (unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of that). When we pulled a corner of the carpet up to see what was underneath, it was not old hardwood like I had hoped, but a concrete slab. Our basement is not under our entire house, but just one half of it, so the other half is on a concrete slab. We had been thinking that we wanted to do hardwood in that room, but we would have to build up a sub-floor which seemed to be more of a hassle than what it was worth to us. We looked at some engineered hardwood, but we didn't find anything that we were crazy about.

One Sunday morning while watching a show on HGTV, we watched them stain a concrete floor in a kitchen and it looked awesome when it was done. Dan did some research on the whole process, and we decided to give it a shot. We were going to rip the carpet anyway, so if we didn't like how it looked, we could always cover it with carpet or laminate.

We ordered all the products we needed and had a Friday night rip out the carpet date night.

The concrete had a sealant put on the surface, so in order to get the stain to absorb into the concrete, the surface of the concrete had to be sanded down.  Dan got his orbital sander and about 400 sanding pads and went to work. Of course, he made sure to wear the proper safety gear:

Once the sanding was complete, which took the better part of a week, the surface needed to be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed. Then we were ready to stain. The thing about staining concrete is that you have no idea what the color is actually going to be until it is sealed. The stain reacts with the concrete, so depending on any impurities and the type of concrete used, the color can be different in different areas. The stain that we chose was called Cola, which was a reddish brown, however, when it was sprayed on, it looks fluorescent green. As you can see from the pictures. Dan was able to keep the TV plugged in throughout the whole project, so that made things a little easier!

We did two coats of the dye on the floor and Dan pooled the dye in some ares to get more of a contrast in color. There are so many different techniques and color combinations that people have done when staining concrete that look really awesome. After the stain dried, we had to seal it, and the sealant that was recommended was a polymer sealant. Thankfully we did this on one of those rare weekends in February where it was 65 degrees out, because once the sealant was on the floor, we couldn't even be in the house. The fumes were so strong, it took a good week for our house to air out.

Before sealant and wax

After sealant and wax

We loved how the floor came out. Dan put a wax coating on before we moved the furniture in, and the floor will have to be resealed and re-waxed every couple of years. We then put in some baseboards and painted the room.

I said "we" a lot regarding this project, but Dan really did the majority of it. I just helped with the demo and the painting. Dan did all the floor prep and staining, cut and installed all the baseboards. He's quite the handyman!

D&L