I’m finally at the point in my painted studio floor project where I feel like I’m making good progress. I have to work in sections, and the section I’m working on right now is about 19.5 feet by 14 feet. So once that area is painted and I give it about 24 hours to dry, I’m going to cover it up, move the whole thing to that side of the room, and then work on the back part of that room, which is 19.5 feet by 7.5 feet. , plus the rear entrance, the bathroom and the storage room.
This weekend, I finally started painting. After all the prep work (sanding, sanding, and more sanding, more wood filler, sanding again, priming, and more sanding), I was ready for the fun part. The painting! I applied one coat of primer and two coats of porch and floor paint. I decided to do the gray color as the base color and then I’m going to go back and do the white checkerboard pattern on the gray.
It is therefore the darker color of the two. It’s as dark as the ground will be. And I was amazed at how clean and bright this light gray looked compared to the original floor. I knew the white would look really clean and bright, but I didn’t expect the light gray to be such a contrast.
Today I will be ready to start gluing the design and painting the white checkerboard pattern on the floor. This will be the fun part seeing the floor change from a solid color to a fun design.
But there is a small problem. I’ll be ready to start gluing and painting this afternoon, and yet, I haven’t quite decided exactly how I want to do the floor yet. I know I want a checkerboard floor. This part of the plan is frozen in my mind, and I won’t doubt it or change my mind. But what I’m still undecided on is whether or not I want a border around the wall (I really think so), and if I do a border, does the border just follow the wall? Or does the border follow the wall and cabinets?
Here’s what the floor would look like if I just made a simple checkerboard pattern across the entire area. It looks a little busy to me, although in reality it probably wouldn’t since the white and gray I’m using are much more subtle than the colors I’ve used in this photo. And obviously the pink areas are where my cabinets will go. It’s probably not exactly to scale.
I really like the idea of a border, though. And I like the idea of using both colors to distinguish the different areas. And since I decided on a checkerboard floor, I thought a border would follow the walls and cabinets, like this…
But now I’m guessing. Maybe the border shouldn’t follow the cabinets, just follow the wall. The problem with this is that on the entire front wall of the room (the wall with the two windows and the wallpaper) the border would be completely lost if the border followed the wall.
So I could make the border follow the cabinets on this wall, since the cabinets will be wall to wall with no gaps, and then in the rest of the room the border will follow the wall. This means I would lose some of the edging under the cabinets on the side wall, but it would make the whole floor design more symmetrical.
*sigh* I don’t know. The good thing is that I can go ahead and start the checkerboard design, since I’m going to start in the center of the room and then see if I get any clarity as I progress. But please let me know your thoughts on these floor design options.
EDIT:
In the photo showing the border following the walls and cabinets, the area around the side door on the right looked very small and squished. So I walked into the studio, measured and recorded what that area would actually look like with a border following the front cabinets, the wall around the door, and the side cabinets. In the actual room, there is much more space in this area for the design to “breathe”.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and is unable to do physical labor, so I do the majority of the house work by myself. You can find out more about me here.