Powder Room Reno Pt. 4: Painting Tile Floors!

Y'ALL. I'm just going to cut right to chase here. This worked SO well. So, so, so well. It's holding up great, and I'm thrilled with how it looks. The end. If you want to know more, you can read on about how we did it, but if you're just here to know "yeah, but did it work?" Yes it did, and I'm obsessed!!

When we moved in, we had the same salmon-y colored tile floor throughout the entire kitchen and all the bathrooms in the house. They look yellow-y in the lighting of this room, but believe-you-me. They were the color of cooked salmon... a light, milky pink. No gracias.

The previous seller renovated the kitchen and baths and must have bought it all in bulk. Lovely. When we re-did the kitchen floors to hardwood, I knew I'd eventually want to get to the bathroom, but figured it would come in time. Well, the time has come and gone! We heavily debated replacing them -- even bought some sample tiles to see if we liked them better. We did love the idea of replacing the tile altogether, but the thought of adding another project onto our already long to do list was overwhelming, and it would have pushed us over budget, even with a small space.

I've already shared how we scored our $250.00 slab of granite (it's true!), and went over budget on the wallpaper because (#icantmath) so any budget we had for flooring went out the window. I had read tons of articles on painting tile floors and I figured, "what's the worst that can happen." Painting the countertops didn't work out well for me, but I wasn't ready to give up on paint just yet.

After reading over a dozen posts about painting tile floors, I decided to go with chalk paint and a heavy duty sealer. I'll link all the products we used below.

It's been about 6 weeks since we did this. We use this bathroom every day, vacuum it every week, and wear shoes in it all the time and there's not one little scratch. It's holding up super well and I am SO thrilled!

Here's how we did it:
- Clean everything with a heavy duty de-greaser. I used this product.
It doesn't say to do this, but I wiped everything down again with water, and dried it with a microfiber towel, twice. Just to be sure!

- I used a heavy grit sanding block to rough up the surface of the tile. I spent a solid 20 minutes doing this, and I think it really helped.

- Tape off all the surfaces and edges

  

- Wipe everything down with water and microfiber tile again. No hair or dust particles please!
Because the surface of my tile is glossy and polished, I used an extra adhesive bonding primer. I highly recommend this if your surface is really smooth. Even after sanding, it still felt really glossy to me. I think this primer is a big part of why it's holding up so well!

  

- Let primer fully dry -- then do a second coat. Just to be sure :)

- Then, I used a small foam roller to apply the chalk paint. I found this awesome chalk paint at my local Ace Hardware by Magnolia. You know I love me some Joanna Gaines so I was excited to use it! I bought a few different white options, but settled on the color ShipLap. Let first coat fully dry. I did 3 coats to make sure I got extra smooth coverage.

- Then, I used a chalk paint sealer. I did 3 coats with a regular paint brush (letting each one fully dry in between applications). The first picture is of me beginning to apply the chalk paint so you can see how it differs from the streaky primer. The second photo is after 3 coats.

  

- Remove tape at a 45* angle.... and voila! Painted floors. Before...

And AFTER!

- Once you are finished, I recommend waiting 24+ hours before walking on them. There's a tiny dark streak in the paint in the first tile (right above my right foot) that you can see in this pic... It's actually an indent in the paint from me walking on it too soon. I thought it was dry about 12 hours later, but because I had done so many coats, it wasn't. I realized it right away and stepped off, but that little indent will always bother me. Spenser says I have to leave it as a reminder to be patient with my projects. #lessonlearned

Before: 

    

After: 

Before: 

After: 

Like I said, it's been 6 weeks since we've done this and we walk on it multiple times a day every day. There hasn't been any wear or tear on it at all. I will definitely be back with an update after 6 months & a year to see how it's holding up! I cannot *wait* to tackle the upstairs bathrooms and finally rid myself of the salmon tile once and for all. And guuuuys! This is my last bathroom reno update! We tackled so much in this project... and a ton of firsts for us.

- Painting existing cabinet
- Installing wallpaper for the first time
- Our first big reno fail & replacing the counter top
- And our first time painting tile flooring 

We definitely took a risk taking on some of these DIY's, but thankfully all but one turned out better than I expected (and let's be honest, the new granite is the biggest consolation prize ever. Way better than painted counters, for sure!). We've decided we're going to cool it for a bit on home projects and focus on saving up some moolah and dreaming about some bigger projects we may want to do later this year (like more landscaping and possibly a bigger bathroom remodel upstairs). I'm working on our latest quarterly update (I'm a month behind) to show our progress again, so I'll pop in now and again for stuff like that! Thanks for tagging along.