Has anyone painted their floors?

[broccolibush]

I live in a fairly modern boxy flat with engineered wood flooring that has seen better days - it was installed by the developers 20ish years ago and has gone that horrible yellowy colour that some woods do after decades of exposure to the sun. It's also scratched and not as pretty as it might be.

It is, however, entirely functional as a floor and the green person inside me doesn't want to rip it up and send it to landfill and replace it (and the skirtings, and the doors). I'm also not keen on the upheaval or the cost of doing so. It's also the same flooring throughout our flat, aside from the bathrooms, so I don't think I can cope with replacing it bit by bit. I also know that some of the dents in it go entirely through the finish - it's engineered hardwood - so sanding and refinishing it won't be ideal. Also lots of dust.

I was looking at repainting some furniture recently and this sent me down an internet rabbithole about painting floors. Both rust-oleum and Annie Sloan chalk paint can allegedly be used on engineered wood without too much prep (a light sand and a good clean). Has anyone done this with good results? I'm quite happy - keen even - to do work like this myself and think that a dark painted floor might look really cool in a bright open plan flat.

If you have done it do you have any tips? Am I totally mad and about to ruin my floors?

I also love your white floors @stuntbubbles! I haven't had a ton of luck with chalk paint when I've tried it, I'd get something specific for floors.

So in the spirit of fuckit but not wanting to completely destroy the flat we painted the inside of a cupboard this weekend. We used @stuntbubbles magic primer and then several coats of Ronseal Diamond Hard floor paint in 2 different shades of grey to see whether we liked them. It looks pretty good, and the paint is supposed to be "diamond hard" after 72 hours so on Wednesday I'm going to throw my keys, the contents of my cutlery drawer and anything else I can find that's hard and sharp onto the cupboard floor. And probably wheel around on my office chair for good measure. If this doesn't completely trash the floor in there I think it's JFDI time - white for the living space, hallways and office, grey for the bedrooms. Which grey remains to be decided as I change my mind on a minute by minute basis.

Thanks for the tips/encouragement/suggestions.

Would love to know what happens.

On what lasted best. Not really a fair comparison to be honest. Sanded and varnished (with or without stain) did really well in halls. No chipping. Main issue was high heels or no stain resulting in orange pine. Floor paint hasn't chipped but scuffs if you forget felt tabs on chair feet. Gloss possibly wears the most but I quite like the effect. The ones I have done seem to wear rather than chip, which looks different.

Main issues are noise and its not as warm as carpet.

Not engineered wood, but in my last (1030s) house we lightly hand sanded the floorboards, painted them with black wood stain, and then ragged it off.
The boards were different colours under the carpet as over the years people had varnished/treated the areas not covered by rugs (economic reasons), and the stain evened everything up.

cherrytree could you tell me more about the "lightly sanded by hand" process .Did you do it without a machine/power tools ?

Use the primer.
Don't use chalk paint.

A charcoal black might be better than grey. Grey is very office-y.

Good luck!

I've painted over previously painted boards so no prep and it looked great. I now want to paint the bare boards in a small room in this house. They boards feel pretty smooth - do I really need to sand or can I get away with just scrubbing clean and painting?

Well that didn't quite go according to plan...

It has been the required 72 hours and I can scratch the primer off with a fingernail. I can also scratch the paint right back to the wood with my fingernails. So our very light sand and magic primer didn't work on my floors - goodness only knows what they're coated with.

I suspect that if we were going to do this we'd have to do it properly - hiring a fuck off sander and making an enormous mess, which I'm just not going to do. So I'm going to live with the yellow floors for a little longer and buy a massive rug to hide the worst of it in the sitting room. I have some bits of furniture I want to paint so the paint and primer we bought won't go to waste.

I suspect now I'm just going to have to put up with it until we move (if we ever do).

That's too bad. I've painted so many different surfaces with primer and nary a problem; it's perplexing to think why that didn't work.

I wouldn't give up just yet; perhaps a different primer or deglossing product?

I thought engineered wood could be sanded down! Looking into hard flooring and was going with engineered flooring over lvt for similar landfill reasons... I know engineered flooring is not wood all the way through but lvt feels a bit like plastic coating your home and I can't get used to it (even though I really want it)

I say sand it ..and if it goes wrong then carpet over the top?

I'm curious @broccolibush what type of primer was it that you used? Was it waterbased? If there is any moisture in the floor at all, then it'll take till the 12th-of-never to dry. Do you or your neighbours have a moisture meter? You could put it to the floorboards & see if they're slightly too moist to let the primer dry.

@broccolibush I just re-read the thread & saw you have engineered wood, could this be oiled & not varnished? In which case that might make it difficult for the primer to stick.

X