Painting a Hardwood Floor

The biggest question when we decided to paint our hardwood floor was what colour?

The floor that had been our inspiration for this step had been grey and initially that was the colour we were leaning toward.  However, before we made a final decision we decided to do some searching on the internet to see examples of other colours.  The grey floor in the photo below was very attractive.

Picture from Cozette Coffman

We found numerous examples of floors in this shade, sometimes with a hint of green or blue to them that we greatly admired.  But as I googled further and further I came across a forum discussing how to paint a wood floor and someone on that forum posted photos of a floor they had done.  And it was red.

I am the type of person that, when I make up my mind, there's no changing it.  I wanted that red floor the instant I saw it.  Jody didn't stand a chance.

Oh he tried.  Red is hard to work with other colours.  If we don't like it there's no hiding it.  But it had to be red.  Dark red in fact, the darker the better.

The man knows when he's beat so off we went to the paint store.  We wanted a paint that was hard wearing, didn't have too much gloss and could be washed frequently.  That was a bit difficult to find.  Employees at the hardware store were baffled.  They had deck paint but who would paint their living room floor?  I hadn't realized this wasn't a common thing to do.  After a bit of searching we found a floor paint (so the canister said) and then worked on finding the right shade.

By mistake, both of us ended up purchasing a can of paint.  In two different shades of red.  One a dark cranberry colour and one with a more orange tone.  Since we had two cans anyway we decided to test them on the floor.  Thank goodness we did this first because to our surprise we found that the water stains below the paint almost immediately began to emerge through the colour creating a white film on the floor.  That water damage was still creating a problem after all these years.

A solution was easy though.  We would buy a can of undercoat that would form a barrier between the boards and the paint.  Tint it red and no one would be the wiser.  Except this happened.

The sales rep had assured us that red tints always looked pink and we weren't to worry.  But this was seriously PINK!  We were substantially worried and with good reason.  After the first coat of red paint the floor looked like this.

That was NOT the colour I wanted.  The pink undertone was combining with the red to make this hideous ultra bright fuschia hybrid.  Let that be a warning to all you folks who plan on painting something red in the future.  Do not use a pink undercoat no matter what the sales rep tells you.  Holley Garden at Roses and Other Gardening Joys later advised me that grey is the appropriate colour to undercoat red.  I wouldn't have guessed that but after this experience I would definitely use grey in future.

So what were we to do?  Well, we had two cans of paint so we went to town with it.  We painted, and painted and painted.  With each new coat of paint the pink receded just a little bit more. Even though the two cans were different colours we didn't care, as long as the floor wasn't pink anymore.

The good news is it worked.  Eventually the pink receded and only a red floor remained.  The bad news, it was sticky.  Very very sticky.  For months after the fact that floor would not cure.  Humidity was one of the culprits but 4, or was it 5?, coats of paint was also to blame.  It was months before we could safely set foot in the room without our socks sticking to the floor boards.

I was so very happy though.  We were exceptionally fortunate that the colours combined well and the final result was exactly what I was looking for.

We had managed to save our original hardwood floor and it was a brilliant shade of deep red.