Now that our Fix My Fail episode has aired we can finally give you all the details on how to give the floors in your home a fun, new stenciled look! This was our first of many quarantine DIY projects, but this twist on this one was that we had to film ourselves. To this day we can’t believe HGTV trusted us enough to provide them with our own quality content to air on national television. LOL!
Ok, let’s get to it! The trick with getting this floor right the first time is patience. Don’t rush your work and allow enough time for everything to dry. Lyndsay’s mudroom was our room of choice for this project, it was a small 3’ x 7’ space and took us about 15 hours total to complete!
What you will need:
Clean:
The most important part of this DIY is ensuring that the area you are painting is free of any dirt or dust that can get stuck in the floor while you paint. We used an organic cleaner that Lyndsay likes that doesn’t leave any residue or film. We swept, vacuumed, cleaned, and dried it and then taped everything off.
Prime:
We used a water-based primer and started by using a brush in the grout lines and around the edges. Once those are done you can use a paint roller to paint the tiles quickly. Let it dry for two hours and then prime again. Let dry overnight or 24 hours.
Pro tip: Be sure to use good materials to avoid having fuzzies or bristles from the brush land in your paint. If they do, they will be locked into the paint!
Paint:
Next, we grabbed some black paint. It was no fancy black, just what we could find off the shelf at the hardware store. We used the same technique as before, starting with a brush at the edges and grout lines and then rolled the tiles. We let that dry for about 6 hours and then did a second coat.
Stencil:
Remember patience is key when getting to this step! For the size of our room, we found it best to start in the middle and build off of it since we didn’t have anything to workaround. Some people say to start in the corner, which I can see if you are working with a flat surface like concrete or linoleum. We worked our way down and over until we finished the whole middle of the room and let it dry overnight. The next day, we began the outside stenciling. It’s not going to be perfect, but you can touch up later!
Pro tip: Use a blow dryer to speed up the drying process just enough so that if you touched it by accident it wouldn’t smear.
Once it was time to stencil the outside, we started with the largest tiles working to the smallest. I had to cut the stencil down for the smaller tiles, so it worked best going largest to smallest. Let it dry overnight again.
Finishing Touches:
Come back in the morning with a cup of black paint and a cup of white paint to touch up. We started in the corner and touched up as we went. Don’t forget to blow dry as you go!
Seal:
Allow the finished product to dry completely for about 72 hours before sealing it.
We hope you love the outcome as much as we do! Be sure to tag us @lambandcompany in all your future DIY’s. You can watch the full episode of Fix My Fail and Episode 6 of Unsellable Houses that features floor stenciling on HGTV.com.
Xo, Les
