Stained Concrete Floor?

Old concrete is hard to adhere stain to and have stick. Ours has popped up with wear, but we still like it. We've done it through our home, and done a blue spackled surface in the garage. I'm ready to use a wood or laminate in the house (just because we're home all day and its been hard on my joints...need special shoes for foot problems) but still like it in our converted classroom/garage and use area rugs.

My husband and I pulled up all the carpet vinyl in our home and stained the concrete. It was a very symple process, but messy and took a lot of scrubbing to get the concrete ready. The kit at Lowes comes with a DVD to show you how it is done and it looks great. You basically clean the concrete really well with a product called TSP (available at Lowes). Next you use a garden sprayer to put down the stain (this is the messy step as it causes a chemical reaction that bubbles and can get all over). You let the stain set for several hours depending on the color you want. Next, you use a mixture of baking soda and water to end the stain reaction (more mess). Last, you clean it all up with a shop vac and lots of elbow grease. Now you have to let it dry for 24 hours and then you seal it with the desired top coat. We used an epoxy coat because it is very shiny and creates a nice seal, but there are other choices. The epoxy smells really strong and takes a long time to dry, but looks really nice. We are big time do it yourselfers, so this was not a tough project for us, but I would reccomend it for beginners too (we did ceramic tile and a hardwood floor in our last house and this was sooooo much easier). Have fun.

They are great for many reasons. Easy to care for, easy to clean, inexpensive and really good looking.

There are not so great things about them.
Anything you drop on them will break, crack or chip.. Consider area rugs.

When you stand on them for long lengths of time, your back will be killing you. Kneeling on them for any length of time is almost impossible. and sitting directly on them is very cold. Purchase standing pads for areas where you will need to stand for long periods.. In front of work counters or craft counters, sinks... (I worked retail on one for 5 years)..

And they are not acoustical, so you will need to figure out how to buffer sounds. If you whisper on one side of the room, you can hear it on the other.. If you have the TV or music playing, unless it is really turned down, it the sound bounces off of every wall as well as the floor.

When they get wet, they are very slippery.

The store that I managed with the stained and sealed concrete also had so much traffic on them, the stain did wear out on the main traffic areas. I am sure you will not have thousands of people walking the same path through your room, but it can happen over time.

As you can see, as long as you are aware of the downsides and deal with them they can be great!

Hi C.,
Our entire house is stained concrete and as someone said they are beautiful and easy to clean.

BUT, you have to clean them ALL of the time. It doesn't help that we have two cats, so if we don't sweep them every couple of days, they are very dirty and show any cat hair. Of course, it is also a good thing (I think?!?) that we have to constantly clean them, because it means that our house is much lower in allergens than our previous house, which was wall-to-wall carpeted and only vacuumed every 1 - 2 weeks.

I STRONGLY agree with the poster who mentioned sound-proofing. Of course, you are talking about a garage, which is pretty separate from the rooms of your home. But, in our case, we had the expense of buying multiple area rugs for our rooms, adding curtains in addition to shades, etc.

Let's just say that we can all be awakened by a pin dropping on the floor on the other side of the house!! Since we have a toddler and are expecting another baby in the next two weeks, we are wondering how we will keep the newborn from keeping our toddler awake! We just bought a white noise machine for our toddler's room, so we'll be keeping our fingers crossed!!

Just some advice on the pros and cons of stained concrete floors. Unfortunately, I've never installed them, so I don't have any advice on that front.

Good luck!!
D.

We built a home and had stained concrete throughout. The floor was beautiful. My husband did the staining by himself and didn't have any problems doing it.

As others have said, it cleans up really easy. We lived in the house 3 years and I never noticed any kind of sound problem. It did get slippery when wet, but so does my tile floor. I liked that the floor was cool in temperature because I live in Texas and it made the hot summer easier to deal with. I walked around barefoot all the time and didn't have any problems. However, as someone else said, you don't want to sit on it for long periods of time. You'll get up aching.

When we sold the house, the stained concrete floors were a selling feature. Good luck on whatever you decide.

Let me add just one more to the list of cons- they show every footprint and paw print.
But the upside is that they are wasy to clean. Also if you do it and later decide you don't like it you can always lay the wood floor over it.