This phase of the project started several weeks ago, before everything got real dirty. I used concrete patch stuff to...wait for it...patch the concrete. Only where the carpet tack strips left holes; no need to patch cracks or anything before papering.
As you can see, this was before we mudded over the old paint and texture.
This past week I started the second phase: faux flooring. The first day I papered as much of the hallway as I could before my body gave me the finger. I had completed about two thirds of the hall at that point, and this was done with stain in the glue goo.
Let the papering begin!
I thought I was very clever to paper the length of the hallway first down one side and then down the other. With at least one side dry at any given time, we would retain access the bedrooms and bathrooms. When I went back the next day to paper the bare side, however, I discovered that the dry paper on the first side absorbed too much stain on my second pass. This created a dark "trail" down the center of the hallway.
Unacceptable.
At that point I decided my best course of action would be to cover that all up with a fresh layer of paper using glue goo with no stain. Just glue and water.
It took two layers to cover the darkness.
This worked great, but now I would need to repaper the entire frigging hall. Best to start with the whole catastrophe matching, I figured. So I did. The whole hall. With two layers. That took another couple of days. (Remember - I'm feeble.)
Then I mulled things over for a few days.
My brain was focused on achieving a marble-like finish, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to accomplish that. I watched a YouTube video on creating a faux marble finish on furniture and figured the floor inside the hall pantry would be a great place to test this out.
I gave it one layer of glue goo with the stain mixed in, then took a fine art brush and added full-strength stain at some of the paper seams. Once that was dry, I added another layer of glue goo + stain over the top of that. It turned out looking like crap.
An artist, I am not.
The pantry floor will be getting a mulligan at some point.
So aaaaanyway, after carefully vacuuming and then getting on my hands and knees with a damp washcloth to scrub off all the cat and dog footprints (storm, remember?), I started painting on the goo (with stain).
Here's the hall with one coat.
It's looking pretty good, imo, but needs
to dry completely
each time before I decide if I want it darker.
2 coats
3 coats
4th coat of stain with lots more stain in the goo!
I'm probably going to apply just one more coat before transitioning to the poly finish, but I wanted to get this published. It's been sitting in my drafts for the past couple of weeks as I do the work and add the photos.
More to come...
No comments:
Post a Comment