Me and My Bright Ideas, or 2021 DIY Project #1

Being in the house and working from home full time for over a year has led me to want to make some changes. Full disclosure, I want to move out of state, but I don’t know if we’ll (I’ll) be allowed to continue to work from home permanently. So in the meantime, I decided I’ve got a DIY project (or two?) in me. Project #1: paint and stencil my vinyl bathroom floor.

Preparation

Research – I read up on a lot of other people’s experiences, including people who updated their postings with how the floor held up after an extended period of time. The max time frame I found was about two years. Not that the floors didn’t last beyond two years, I just didn’t find any post updates older than two years.

Knee protection – I found it odd that no one bothered to mention this in their how to posts. If this project is something you’re considering, hear me when I say this. If you weigh a buck ‘o five soaking wet and are in your twenties, you can probably get away with some folded up towels. But if your knees are a day over 30, invest in some good knee protection, and try it out before you begin your project. While I don’t have knee (or back) problems, I am half a century old and I’m carrying more weigh than I care to talk about. I started out looking for contractor knee pads, but settled on these kneeling pads instead. I figured I’d get more use out of these in the future than actual knee pads. If I’d finished this project in a couple of days, these probably would’ve been fine. But after two weekends of using these, they started to feel a little too firm, so I incorporated an old memory foam pillow into the mix.

Supplies

Floor repair kit – If you have any imperfections in your floor, you’ll need to fix them or they’ll show right through and ruin your hard work.

Zinsser Bulls Eye 123 Primer

Behr paint. It’s the only paint I use in my home. I love the wall paint because it only takes one coat and eliminates the need for primer. It’s more expensive, but worth every penny. To paint my floor, I went with their interior chalk decorative paint in coastal beige and taupe. This is the type of paint I chose based on my research, but there are many other types available. There is literal “porch and patio floor paint” made by several companies including Behr. I think the chalk paint probably makes the stenciling easier, but that’s just a guess since I don’t have any other experience to compare it to.

Minwax polycrylic protective finish – Just a quick note about this finish. If you read the back, it says not for use on floors or high traffic areas. You don’t want to use a finish specifically made for floors because they usually contain an orange or yellow tint. And that’s because they’re designed to be used on wood floors. I chose this finish based on my research and looking at other people’s long term results. It seems to hold up pretty well and doesn’t yellow over time.

Choose your stencil (see Step 5 for more info). I bought mine from Amazon, but there are some great stencil specific websites like this one or this one.

Other supplies: A four inch high density foam roller with extra heads, a couple of disposable trays (for easier cleanup), a couple of foam brushes (I bought a multi-size pack because they come in handy for any paint job), a short handled, angled synthetic brush (Wooster’s is a good one but there are others), painter’s tape (my personal favorite is Frog Tape, the wider kind), and other painting basics like a drop cloth, paint rags, paint stirrers, and a paint can opener. **For this small bathroom, a one quart container of the primer and each paint color were more than enough.

The Process

I want to point out this project took me two weekends to complete. Reason being, I didn’t want to spend my entire three day 4th of July holiday weekend working on a home improvement project, so I completed a little bit each day.

Step 1 – I cleaned the floor like I was going to eat off of it. I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed like I was Cinderella, to include using an old toothbrush to get into the corners. Next, I wiped the floor down with a clean damp cloth to make sure there was no residual cleanser, then wiped it dry with a clean cloth.

Step 2 – I had a couple of small gouges in my vinyl flooring so I used the floor kit to fill them in. Honestly, I probably could’ve skipped this step because the largest cut was probably about an inch long. Next, I sanded the spots smooth with a sanding block sponge (sorry, I’m not sure of the grit, I had it on hand from a previous project), then wiped the areas with a damp cloth followed by a dry cloth. This took all of five minutes, maybe less.

Step 3 – I taped off the baseboards and around the tub, toilet, and bottom of the vanity with painter’s tape.

The pattern on the vinyl is made to look like tile, with actual indentations to mimic caulk lines. If it was laid correctly (and straight), you could use a feature like that to help you line up your stencil.

Step 4 – Next, I put down three coats of primer, allowing plenty of drying time between coats. Here’s what I found to be annoying though. No matter what I did, there was always hair on the floor. I vacuumed, I swept, I used a damp cloth followed by a dry cloth to clean the floor, I wore a bonnet, I was minimally clothed (underwear and t-shirt if you must know), and I wore socks. Still, I would blink and there’d be a hair in the floor right where I was about to roll on some paint. Also, to be clear, this wasn’t cat hair (my cat is short haired and doesn’t shed), it was hair from my head (so get your mind out of the gutter). **TIP: What I ended up doing was putting a piece of painter’s tape on the back of my hand to get it up quickly and keep moving. I know I missed a few though, so if anyone is ever murdered in this bathroom after I sell my home, I will be suspect number one based on any DNA results. Seriously though, you want to avoid getting anything in the paint because it will cause the paint to eventually crack or chip when it’s walked on over time.

Step 5 – You can skip this step if you’ve already decided on a stencil. I bought a variety of eight and twelve inch stencils to choose from by doing a search on Amazon. I would probably suggest using one of the stencil websites I listed in the supplies section though, and I explain why in my final thoughts at the end of this post. I was leaning more towards the larger stencils because it would move things along a little quicker, but I was open to both sizes. I taped the ones I thought I might like to some cardboard so I could see what each of them would look like. I used primer to do this in between waiting for the coats to dry.

Here are a couple of the eight inch stencils, taped to cardboard with painter’s tape.

Here are a couple of the twelve inch stencils.

Here’s what the twelve inch patterns look like using primer.

Step 6 – This wouldn’t be a true Angela DIY project if I didn’t screw something up. I won’t go into detail about how 90% of my first can of primer ended up in the carpet in my living room in a freak accident. I’m just thankful for quick reflexes and my Bissell Little Green portable carpet cleaner. Anyway, the plan was to use the coastal beige color on the floor and the taupe would be used for the stenciling. I somehow managed to get it backwards, but I decided to keep going and see how it looked. I figured worse come to worse I could paint over everything and start over. I put three coats of the taupe on the floor and let them dry for at least an hour between coats, using a fan to help. Both the primer and the paints dried to the touch fairly quickly, but I would suggest following the directions on the containers.

Here’s what the floor looks like after three coats of the taupe chalk paint.

Step 7 – Here’s where the rubber meets the road. I wanted to start in the corner near the tub (upper left corner in the picture above), because in my mind, that’s where your eye is naturally drawn when you look at the floor. But here’s what I did before I made the final decision. I had a 9 pack of 12 inch stencils, so I laid them out several different ways on the floor to see if there was a better place to start that would give me the maximum number of full stencil spaces, versus places where I’d have to do a partial stencil (which would be more work). I hope that makes sense, I do not have a picture of it. To be clear, the package was of nine different stencil designs, I was simply using the size of the stencils as a pattern on the floor to find the best starting point. I only had one stencil of the design I used on my floor. I ultimately decided that starting in the corner near the tub was the best choice. Also, while the vinyl had a fake tile pattern on it, it was laid crookedly so I didn’t want to use the fake grout lines as guidelines for my stencil design.

I used painter’s tape to make two tabs to use as handles to pull the stencil up (on the upper and lower right-hand corners), and I taped the stencil to the floor on all four sides in the center to keep it in place for painting. I was able to easily use those same four pieces of tape many times before replacing them with fresh pieces of tape. I also kept one wet and one dry painter’s cloth handy at all times to clean up any accidents or mistakes.

A quick note about the stenciling process – You. Will. Need. Patience. Be sure you have the patience to finish this project because there isn’t a way to speed it up once you get started. If you put too much paint on the roller, the stencil will bleed (I posted a picture further down). It took me two coats to properly complete the stencil. The only way to speed up this part of the process is to use a hair dryer to dry the paint in between the two coats. I suggest doing one or two practice runs with a stencil on some cardboard or poster board to get a good feel for how to do it, and also keep a paper towel or some cardboard nearby to roll any extra paint off of the roller if you get too heavy handed. You could use a spray adhesive to hold the stencil to the floor, which supposedly helps with bleeding, but it sounded like too much additional work to me. Also, if you do this over a day or two, you shouldn’t need to clean the stencil until you’re completely finished. But if you allow longer periods of time between starting and finishing your stenciling like I did, I would suggest cleaning it. A soak in hot soapy water and a scrub with the scrubby side of a typical dish sponge should do it.

Here is where I had to make the decision if I wanted to repaint the floor the beige color like I originally planned, or leave it as it was. Understand, there will be some touch-up required, which is why I suggested the foam paint brushes. In this picture you can see where some touch up will be needed where the two stenciled areas come together.

Step 8 – Stencil all the areas that you can fit the full stencil flat. Depending on the size and layout of your floor, you might want to take a break and let some of the areas dry, so as not to smudge them while you’re kneeling on them trying to get to other areas.

This was a stopping point for me. I wanted to give the completed areas time to dry before finishing the stenciling near the doorway. *The space in front of the toilet wouldn’t fit the full stencil lying flat so I left it for later.*

Here’s what happens if you have too much paint on the roller. You can see how the paint bleeds under the stencil causing this messy effect.

Step 9 – Completing those areas where the stencil does not lie flat. **SIGH** Here’s my suggestion. If you can, buy several stencils so you can methodically cut them to fit the areas where the full stencil won’t fit. Unfortunately this wasn’t an option for me, because my stencil came in a pack of nine different stencil styles. To get to those (pain in the @ss) awkward spots, you’ll need to bend the stencil (it’s very flexible) and tape it down with the painter’s tape. Next, use the roller to get what you can, and use the foam brush to fill in what you can’t reach with the roller. I posted a picture below, but here’s a video (starting at the 3:05 mark) that demonstrates the process. In the video, she’s using a stencil brush for the touch up. I chose to buy foam brushes instead because they’re multi-purpose, versus a more expensive and very specific stencil brush that I may or may not use in the future. You can also see the woman in the video cut her stencil to finish other areas of the floor.

Here is an area next to the vanity where I had to bend the stencil and tape it down to fit the space.

Here’s the finished stenciling, before any touch up.

Step 10 – Make sure the floor is clean and dry before applying the poly finish. Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for drying time. I allowed mine to dry (with a fan) for a little over an hour for each coat. This part of the process, which should have been super quick and easy, ended up being SUPER annoying because I felt like I had a Bigfoot standing over my shoulder. WHERE DOES ALL THIS HAIR COME FROM? I feel like I should be almost bald at this point! The poly is very sticky so the painter’s tape trick wasn’t helping! This time I had to just dig the hair out with my fingernail, which was very tedious. Imagine getting hair out of a thin layer of honey. There’s at least 8-10 pieces of DNA in this floor, just in case you want to buy my home and plan a murder in my bathroom and possibly get away with it by blaming it on me. Seriously though, I know it might sound kind of gross but I want to make sure I’ve giving you the full download of my experience so you know what you might be able to expect.

Step 11 – Once the poly is dry, remove the painter’s tape. You’ll want to pull it slowly and at an angle. If you pull too fast, you could remove some paint and ruin your project. I rarely have this issue with Frog tape, which is why I suggested it. Be sure to give the floor a few days to fully cure before putting anything back on it. Especially if the weather is hot and humid. It may feel dry to the touch, but you want to make sure it’s good and dry so nothing gets stuck to it.

Here’s a picture of the finish on the floor. It’s not too shiny and gives the floor a nice, finished feel under bare feet. It has decent grip and doesn’t feel slippery for anyone wondering.

Here’s a side by side of the before and after of the finished product.

Just a few final thoughts

I asked myself if I would do this again. I would, but I might’ve done a few things differently.

I like it. It’s a nice change after looking at that same old yellowing vinyl for twenty years.
Was it easier than laying tile? Good question. Maybe slightly, maybe not. I’m guessing since I’ve never laid tile before, but I understand the process and even briefly considered it.
I might have chosen a stencil with a stencil register (guide) to help me line the pattern up better. Click here and click on the images of the actual stencil (to the left of the stencil description) to see what a stencil register looks like and how it helps with alignment.
I’m glad I went with a larger stencil. I originally wanted to go with an eight inch stencil but a.) I couldn’t find a larger version of it and b.) I read somewhere that a larger pattern will make a small space feel larger. And besides, I wasn’t 100% sure I had the patience for this project to begin with, so if I had used a smaller stencil, my floor might still be sitting unfinished.
I had to let go of perfection. Your floor will not turn out 100% perfect. But the good thing is the pattern will help hide any mistakes. Your eye tends to focus on the overall pattern and not the little areas where you feel like you didn’t get it just right. Here’s a tip: if your eye doesn’t naturally flow across the floor, but instead stops at a particular area, you need to touch it up. This will make sense when you’ve finished stenciling.
I wish I’d have finished it over the long holiday weekend and took an additional vacation day (or two) to compensate for working over the weekend. There’s more work involved if you don’t complete it in a couple of days, unless you use another bathroom in the meantime. You’ll have to make sure your floor is clean before you begin again, try not to drip water on an unfinished floor when you get out of the shower, etc. Nothing major but still an inconvenience. Also, it got a little tedious being on the floor and on my knees over two weekends instead of one, even with the knee protection.

Up next, an update to my kitchen (I hope!). I’ll post about it when I’m done, but it may be a few weeks because I’d like to replace the sink and faucet and get some work done on the pipes before I complete my DIY plan.

A DIY Gone (mostly) Right,

Angela