We currently have vinyl flooring. While it was nice when he put it in (8 yrs ago) and looks exactly like tile (ppl feel the floor when we tell them because they dont believe me) its time to replace it. The bedrooms have stained loose carpet that is about 8 to 10 yrs old and needs to be replaced. I am wanting to stain the concrete in the entire house. My husband wants to replace the kitchen with the same vinyl flooring or somthing that matches. He also wants to clean and stretch the carpet. We are wanting to move but were only in the talking about it process. Our house was built in the 70's and my husband is worried about the glue from the vinyl causing strange patterns in the finished stain. I feel like the acid wash they put on will take care of that weird stuff. Better than what we are currently living with. Its dirty ( at the peeling up edges ), scratched, peeling up. Concrete would be so much easier to care for. If the next residents did not like it they could cover it.
If you have had your indoor floors stained how much did it cost? Did you diy or have pros handle it. Also our square footage is about 1400 or so. Cannot remember the exact sq. footage.
Ok ty ladies. The hubby was right once again. One of you noted that the concrete had cracks. That was enough to change my mind. Weather the cracks were thin or big I dont like the look. I dont want to pour it either. I might suggest to him that we leave a flooring allowence. The kitchen floor was torn up by our dog. I would not want to pay the fee for having one carpet cleaned and stretched then pay another fee for the others. There is a charge every time they make a house call. So looks like we will figure something else out!
I just encouraged my DH to pull up the linoleum in our office (used to be a garage). I don't know much about the process, but I would rather have that than anything else in there. We are putting in hard wood in the rest of the house when we eventually change the flooring (hopefully by the end of this year).
We have stained concrete. We did it ourselves (disclaimer: My hubby does estimating for road construction, so he knows concrete inside and out). The work doing it yourself is tedious, but not difficult. We love it ! It's basically indestructible. The only issue we have is that it was worrisome when our kids were going through the climbing phase and when it's wet it can get extremely slippery. Other than that it's fabulous. We did our great room for a few hundred dollars.
We did look into hiring someone. The first poster is correct. A commercial company will want to put down a thin layer on concrete on your existing. This will make the coloration more uniform and covers cracks and imperfections. This is the main reason we opted to do it ourselves. We didn't want the extra cost or mess (no matter what you do, concrete pours involve a mess). We came up with a random pattern, so we weren't too worried about imperfections.
We also found a large crack in the concrete. We called out the engineers who designed our foundation. My husband wasn't worried, he was fairly certain it was normal shrinkage cracking. Since the floors would be exposed if we ever decided to sell the house, he wanted verification that the cracks were normal and not proof of a cracked foundation. So now we have an engineering report filed away. The crack goes mostly unnoticed by guests and most think "it adds character" when they do notice.
I am pretty sure I have a word document showing the steps we took to do our floors. pm me your email if you are interested and I will see if I can hunt them down.
Have you thought about papering it? I just did that in my master bath and it looks amazing--like a stone floor.
Remove the existing flooring and clean the concrete. After it is dry, tear contractor's paper into the sizes you want to use and glue it down with a mix of half water and half Elmer's Glue making sure there are no air bubbles. If you cannot smooth out some of the bubbles, don't worry about it. Sand over the bubbles then wash over the area with a stain. When all is dry apply two coats of Ultra Fast-drying Polyurethane.
Staining concrete is not as easy as you'd think and should really be done when the concrete is being poured. You can theoretically stain concrete after the fact, but if you have the wrong kind of cement, you won't end up with a nice stain, it will be more of a paint over the concrete that can chip.
Talk to your contractor about whether the acid will truly wash away the vinyl glue (it did not at our house), and what the finished product will look like. Finally, my husband and I love to renovate, but staining a large area was not something we thought we could tackle, so we did hire contractors.
Stained concrete almost always has to be poured with staining in mind. If your house was built in the 70s I would bet that was not the case.
Any and all chemicals 'spilled' during construction will affect the staining process. Including the adhesive used for the vinyl.
There is prep work that can be done in a situation such as yours, but it would not be worth the cost, IMO.
Personally, I think I'd side with your husband in this case. If you're looking at moving then why put such a personal stamp on a house you may be looking to sell. You could compromise and see how the carpeting responds if you just do one room, then maybe just do the kitchen in the concrete thing. I'm way up north, so a concrete floor does not sound appealing, but I bet a cool floor is nice in the heat! I guess my advice is to really think how much work you want to put into a home just to turn around and sell it.
