Building a Mini Building- The Floor

Watch the video here.

This week I decided to show you a fun technique for the floor in the little add on room. I actually had something else planned up until I was about halfway through the process of wallpapering this room. I suddenly remembered this little technique that I had seen on a craft segment on TV about 22 or 23 years ago. I had always planned to try it but never got around to it. When I saw this on TV the person showing it had used it to cover some boxes to make decorative storage boxes. As I was putting the wallpaper it occurred to me that this would probably look really cool on the floor in this room.

The first thing I did was grab a piece of the scrap wood from the kit and try out a sample. It looked good so I now had a new idea for the floor. I could hardly wait until the wallpaper video was filmed to start doing this. (little fun tidbit- in some of the pictures from last week of the wallpaper you might have noticed that I have a piece of paper covering the floor- that's because I had already started this project before I had time to take the pictures for that video)

The supplies could not be easier or really much cheaper. I used some masking tape- be sure to get the tan kind- not the blue or green painter's tape. I think the really cheap stuff probably works better here because we are going to be building up a lot of layers and we don't want much thickness.

I found that running a strip all the way around the room was the best way to start. That way I had the floor covered all the way to the wall all the way around. Then just start tearing off random pieces of tape and fill in the floor. I did run some longer pieces in the middle of the floor on the first layer then used small ones to break up the look of the floor.

After all the tape was in place and I was happy with the look I used some tube acrylic paints to add some color. Just glob some on the floor and spread it around with paper towel. Then I used baby wipes to wipe up the excess paint. Learn from my mistake and don't use near as much paint as I started out using. I do recommend wearing a latex glove for this step other wise you are going to get a lot of paint on your hands.

After the paint dried coat with a sealer, I used Mod Podge Matte for my floor. I did find that I needed to use some coarse sand paper to knock off some little pointy bits where the tape corners lifted. Then I finished with a good heavy final (third) coat of the Mod Podge.

I really love this finish for the floor. I am not sure what to call it. But I love it. I think if you did the same thing on an outdoor patio and used different shades of gray paint it would look like a stone patio.

I think next time I do this I am going to do my paint in layers by applying one color at a time and letting that dry before I follow with a second color. I think that would give more depth to the color.