We had great hopes for a beautiful cement floor and ripped out all of our carpet only to find untreated cement covered with paint, spray paint, marker, plaster, cracks, and small gouges all over it. What can we do to our cement floor to make it beautiful?
This okorder I used to install their products and I once put an overlay on a plain grey concrete patio that made it look like slate tiles. And its guarateed for 30 years.
make sure the surface is clean and paint with garage paint. you can spruce it up with the paint flecks they sell specifically to decorate the floor. Dutch Boy sells the product for about $10 a pint. (that will go a long way)
They have this stuff to resurface concrete floors, it is made for carports or garages but it looks really good. You see it in many large department store floors, like Lowes in my town has there done that way and it is tough as can be. This link is just an example, look it up to find it closer to you.
You can resurface the floor. Then you can stain the concrete and get a really nice finish. But be warned, while you can do this yourself, it will not look near as good as a job done by a professional. Plus if you do the job right, it would be much cheaper to replace the carpet or even install wood flooring. I have a brother in law who owns a company that does this. He has a hard time finding people who are good at dong this. When he trains new hires himself, it takes him about 2 years to fully train them. Out of curiosity, I asked him how much to do this in my laundry room. (I asked after I had just installed new tile, which is what I wanted in the first place) he estimated that to clean, resurface and do a good quality stain job would be about $3,500 for one color. The pattern staining I wanted would have run over $5,000. The laundry room is about 9.5' x 12'. The tile floor I did myself cost me about $300 in tools and another $350 in materials. It took me 4 evenings and a Saturday to do it all. And I did a fairly fancy job! Stained cement floor in a house look great and can add value to the right house. Painted floors generally look poor and do not wear well, along with devalue a piece of property. The material they make for garages is great, but doesn’t look right n the house. (I actually have it in my garage.) My advice-decide what you want and take the time to save up and do the job right. You will be glade you did.
