Concrete Paint

The process of staining a concrete floor is really not that hard. I’ll show you how to do it for less than $0.50 per sq ft. Just follow the steps given here and you’re on your way to a new, beautiful and durable concrete paint stain floor. Let’s get started!

Concrete paint stain – First Day

The first thing you need to do is to test the concrete to make sure it does not have any sealers or curing agents on the concrete. Simply pour about 5 oz of water onto the concrete and spread it around a 1 sq ft area. If the concrete darkens as shown below and doesn’t just bead up on the surface you are “Good to Go”.

Now that you have determined your concrete is stainable, you will need to choose a color. I recommend you order several sample bottles forming various hues of your color of choice. Find a small spot in a closet or an area not to be stained and tape out a square with several boxes in it, depending on how many colors you want to test. As shown here:

Dilute your concrete paint stain sample 1 to 1 with water and apply it to the area marked for that stain color. You can use a sponge or a chip brush. If you decide to use a chip brush, apply using a circular motion so as to avoid brush marks.

After the samples are allowed to sit for 2-3 hours use your sponge and wipe the samples clean of what little residue you might have. When the stain sample is wet and clean that is the color you should expect after sealing with Clear Cover WB Sealer.

Now for the most important part of concrete paint stain process, cleaning your floor. Make sure to remove all sheetrock, glue, adhesives, paint, and any other compounds from the floor, either with a razor scraper or a putty knife. You should also plastic off your walls and door frames. This will make your life easier at the cleanup stage, believe me. Vacuum under your walls especially after sheetrocking as the pieces will come out during the scrubbing and staining. If you have rust stains on your floor use CLR – which you can find in any hardware store. Glu-B-Gone can be used to remove carpet glue and mastic.

After your floor is clean of stains, residues and garbage, saturate the surface with a solution made of 2 parts water to 1 part Dyna-Blue using a pump sprayer. This will open the pores in the concrete and clean the floor like no other product on the market and give you the best results. The floor should then be scrubbed with a floor buffer and a black pad which should be available at your local rental or home improvement center. You can add as much water as you need.

Make sure to do a 15′ by 15′ or 10′ by 10′ area at a time and then have your working partner shop vac the dirty water before the slurry dries. This will ensure that you have no swirl marks left on the surface. You can follow up with a mop and clear water.

This should be enough for the first day. Leave a fan in the room just to keep the air circulating. This will help get the moisture up and out of the room. Have a break! Unless you concrete paint stain a very small room or you are in a hurry, let the floor dry until the next day. Whether you can see it or not the concrete is still wet and if you go to work on it now you won’t get as good of a result as you could. Trust me on this one!

Concrete paint stain – Second Day

Advice: for the next part, work in a well ventilated area or wear a nuisance level acid mask.

Dilute your stain 1 to 1 with water and mix in a 5 gallon bucket. If you don’t have a bucket, pour 1 gallon of water into the pump up sprayer and then pour in your stain. Make sure to use goggles or at least have glasses on when mixing this. Spray the concrete paint stain in a circular motion and move from side to side in the room with a “typewriter” kind of manner. This will help you keep a “wet” edge – what I mean by this is – don’t let your “edges of spray” dry.

As you move along you might see some areas dry faster than others and you can go back and spray just a little more. Spray just enough to saturate the concrete but try not to puddle the concrete paint stain. If you have another person helping you, they can scrub the concrete paint stain in with a soft bristle broom. If they do that, you go back over what they have scrubbed with a light spray to remove the broom marks. This will give you a very consistent look.

If you work by yourself or don’t want to use the broom, it is perfectly ok. Just make sure to saturate the floor with concrete paint stain. Personally I seldom use the broom method and our floors look great.

Let the concrete paint stain sit for 2-3 hours, the walk all over the surface wearing stockings or surgical boots and look for areas that might need a light or second spray. Once you are done let the concrete paint stain sit for another hour and you are ready to clean.

Next flood the surface with water and lightly broom the floor to break loose what little residue you might have. You are ready to shop vac and give it a light once over with a mop and clean water. Make sure to keep the water clean.

All done for today. Put out the fan again and leave the floor to dry until the next day.

Concrete paint stain – Third Day

The third day is the easy one. Just apply 2 coats of sealer and allow to dry until the following day. You may need to allow a few hours between coats. If is it dry to the touch then it is ready for the second coat. You can expect the floor to become quite a bit richer in color when applying the sealer than how it was when you walked in this morning. The sealer will bring out all the beautiful hues and protect the surface for years to come.

There is one final step to the concrete paint stain process and this will also be the part of the maintenance work that will keep your floor beautiful in the long run – we need to apply 3 or 4 coats of floor finish.

Photo courtesy of dizfunkshinal.

A floor finish is an acrylic coating, or “wax” if you will, that is applied to your sealer. This will act as a buffer protecting your sealer and it is easy to apply. I recommend Ez-Glo Polish but you can also use Zep High Traffic floor finish. Ez-Glo can be applied with a lambswool applicator while the Zep High Traffic floor finish can be applied with a rayon blend mop. Your choice – but any one of them does a good job. Each gallon should cover 1,000 – 1,200 sq. ft. and be sure to apply 3-4 coats for the first time out. After that just dust mop, occasional damp mop with a neutral cleaner and reapply maybe once or twice a year depending on foot traffic.