[AndreaNZ]

HI, all -- does anyone have any experience with painting concrete? Specifically, our house is on a concrete slab (it and the house are 13 years old), there's the original carpet - in wretched condition - which we want to pull up, and we can't afford to really replace it with any wood or laminate floor coverings. The carpet is a real nuisance for the allergy sufferers in our family. Are there any good, long/hard-wearing options as far as painting the concrete goes? What obvious signs of moisture should we be looking for? The main room we want to do is the one with the most foot (2 and 4-legged) traffic - the sitting room/eating area.

Thanks!
Andrea
NZ

 

[Don Armstrong]

Yep. Assuming the NZ means New Zealand, you may even have the same brand I'd suggest. Whatever, get special "paving paint". Get a neutral colour for preference - something that won't clash too badly if a patch wears thin and the concrete colour starts showing through. Paint absolutely strictly according to directions, including giving NO LESS than the recommended drying time per coat, and no less than the recommended number of coats.

The brand I used is a premium one, and worth it - Berger Jet Dry.

An approach I've seen is to stencil patterns around the edge of the floor, to make it look like an old-fashioned linoleum.

Bare concrete can be might hard and cold and noisy underfoot. One thing you can do is to get a square of carpet to use as a loose carpet square over your painted floor. There are second-hand pieces of carpet all over the place. Many carpet dealers have them almost unused - they will be fitted to a project home for sale, and the first thing the new owners want to do is change the carpet.

A loose carpet square is not nearly as bad for allergies as a fitted carpet. Much of the dirt goes through - roll back the square periodically and clean the floor underneath it. All that is stuff that's not being caught in the underlay you don't have. For spring-cleaning, or as necessary, roll up the square, take it outside, hang it up, and give it an old-fashioned carpet-beating.

 

[Qvrfullmidwife]

We did this...in all but two rooms in our home.

The key thing as far as long-wearing will be surface preparation before hand. You must get every bit of adhesive off...we did this with solvents, (yuck) and sandpaper and rented a floor stripper for the biggest area.

We used porch and floor paint...after touching up scratches and some minor flaking for a year we went over this with polyurethane...didnt help...we still get the same wear patterns regardless. It is minimal...and we are talking teh room that gets the most useage in our house...ten people...little children on it constantly due to it being our main living/dining/homeschooling area and two large (newfoundland) dogs. The rooms that have area rugs have held up beautifully...and we can shake out the rugs to clean them. Our asthmatics have not struggled at all...it has made a big difference...

Ours is painted to look like tile...most people think that it is and we have had guests get down on their hands and knees to look at it and touch it because they just can't believe that it is not tile!

I have been less than perfectly pleased with it, but we couldnt afford tile (it would be my first choice, followed by wood) and I will tell you one thing...I will never go back to carpet again after seeing what was under it...and we vaccuumed all thetime, and steamcleaned nearly weekly with our hoover steam vac. Well, I might consider it for an upstairs, but never downstairs.

If you hate it you can always put something over it, easily...

 

[agmantoo]

If the concrete does not have a good moisture barrier under it the chances are good that polyurethane will turn loose. In an industrial enviroment I have personally seen the paint come up in sheets. A better choice is a two part epoxy for the coating.

 

[LiL OHNNL]

thats right a high grade epoxy will work wonders and you wont have to worry about the traffic. A two part system is what they use in factories and where food stuff is handled and produced it should last a long time.
John

 

[mikell]

You might get a book on floor painting . My neice painted her basement and like someone else sait it looks like tile.

mikell

 

[AndreaNZ]

Thanks for all the excellent advice! I've been looking at a wide range of products and product specs, and the couple of sales guys I've talked to so far think I'm nuts (but I'm used to that )... I haven't heard of that brand in NZ, Don - the "big" names are Dulux, Wattyl and Resene... Resene looks to have that 2-part epoxy as mentioned above, and I hope at least a small variety of colours so I can create a stencil or something for a faux tile effect. Always up for something new and different!

Cheers!
Andrea
NZ

 

[LiL OHNNL]

you could tape out a pattern and do a color over it and remove the tape and do a clear coat on top you have many options here. Try these web sites for some ideas
www.permacrete.com or www.concretecoatingsinc.com

they are not how to do it sites but you will get an idea from them.
good luck and let us know what you did and how you did it
John

 

[Ed K]

I've researched the epoxy a little bit. It's quite expensive but as with most painting projects, the surface preparation and application are a bigger deal than the material cost. I believe you can get the epoxy with a fleck pattern of a different color that makes it look more like tile (or something other than paint)

Unfortunately the previous owner of my home did to me what I advise you not to do to yourself...he put down a cheap latex based floor paint. Now that it's peeling off you can't put something better on unless you remove all of the original coating which is very tedious, messy and smelly.

Good Luck finding the right product and fight the urge to skimp on paying for it.

 

[Qvrfullmidwife]

Also...make sure that the floor airs out VERY WELL for a week of two before you paint.

The problems that we are having with our stems, I think, from the fact that this was the hardest floor to get all of the adhesive up. It was naaassstttttyyyy.

We used porch and floor paint tinted a cream color to pain a base coat. Then we took three colors...tan, golden and a beige. They were close in shade yet distinct. We swirled them together then took a 12 inch square pc of foam glued to a cardboard back to dip and stamp, dip and stamp. We could get a good 4-5 stamps from each dip into the paint, rotating the square each time so it looked different. We also had fun with it like making a border of smaller shapes and in each room we had a "tile" shaped like the state of Texas. Around the perimeter of the room we painted a Bible verse in the "grout" line.

 

[AndreaNZ]

Thanks again, everyone, for all the advice. Even with the high cost of the good quality sealing and topcoat products, it still comes out to be less than a third of the cost of even the cheapest carpet or laminate flooring. And, with all the painting techniques out there, I can afford to get really creative with this, which I love!

cheers!
Andrea :dance:
NZ