Most.Imaginative.Flooring.Ever

[Stinky The Clown]

I'm watching HGTV. They showed this old couple who had just done a former flour mill up as their home (The show is Rezoned). The floor was torn brown paper (like bag material) set into wet polyurethane, allowed to set and then polyurethaned for several coats on the surface. It looked for all the world like polished stone. They wrinkled the paper a bit to give it some texture and the poly soaked in more or less in any given area giving it some color variation.

I was very impressed.

[NMDemDist2]

1. i love that show but talk about labor intensive! n/t

[Warpy]

2. It doesn't sound like something that would wear awfully well

but I can visualize it and it sounds utterly gorgeous.

I would opt for texturing stained concrete, myself, and then putting sealer coats on that, instead.

The paper bag treatment might be more appropriate to accent walls.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Several coats of poly will wear like iron.

Its actually very tough stuff. Its what they put down in the service bays of car dealers (albeit a catalyzed version).

[Warpy]

7. I know about poly

But I also know about the ridges of those paper bags, and they will NOT wear well.

Nice idea for a wall, though. I have a friend in the biz who uses tissue paper as one of her faux wall finishes. It always looks great.

[wildeyed]

3. Mmmmm....

Sounds yummy. I will look and see if I have it Tivo'd.

I like that show. People are doing such imaginative stuff with those old places. Some of the barn renos are amazing, although I would not like to heat and cool one of those.

I also watch Generation Renovation. They show projects that were all or mostly done by the homeowner, so you could almost imagine doing it yourself. Other shows, you see beautiful houses, but they are 10 million dollars and full of museum quality furniture and art. Not really applicable to my humble lifestyle or budget.

Another neato show is Dwell on Fine Living. It is focused on modern design and architecture, but all of the houses they show are human scaled.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. We don't get Fine Living ... but I read Dwell every month

I like the modern stuff almost as much as I do Art Deco.

[wildeyed]

8. I am becoming more and more interested in modern design.

I think it is a reaction to the excesses of our time. Small, simple, clean, modern and minimal is becoming more and more appealing.

I tried to buy a Dwell magazine, but they didn't have a copy at the last place I checked. Oh well, I will keep looking. I read Metropolitan Home sometimes. My husband refers to it as house porn.

[Stinky The Clown]

9. My kinda porn ...... house porn and food porn

I'm addicted! :)

[eleny]

4. I haven't seen that episode

Luckily they repeat shows from time to time.

I remember seeing a decorating show where they put paper pictures from magazines on a bathroom floor and then used about 5 coats of polyurethane over them to seal the floor. Amazing that it would hold up in a bathroom. I guess I'm a bit skeptical since I was tempted but never tried it. With our concrete slab we could do it. Polyurethane must be incredible stuff in the right hands.

[fudge stripe cookays]

12. I was trying to figure out what to do...

with our guest bath floor when we moved in. We had nasty vinyl flooring that was peeling up.

I have a Shakespeare theme in there, which includes ragged navy blue walls. We also pulled out the hideous stock vanity and plumbing. We found an old antique in which we cut a hole for a $5 sink from the Habitat for Humanity store, found some gorgeous old bronze plumbing hardware, an elaborate gold-framed mirror from Tuesday Morning, then I and hung my matted Shakespeare prints and put my bust of Will on the counter.

But the floor had us in a quandary. We couldn't use Pergo in there, and reprehensor didn't want to put in ceramic tile because the floor is uneven. So I thought...why don't I just paint it?

I got all the old glue off, primed it, and picked about 3 colors of the Ralph Lauren paints that are the sandy textured stuff-- kind of a maroon, a medium brown, and a lighter tan. I put on a full base coat of the maroon, then did a light ragging of the other two colors on top.

After that, I took a yardstick and measured out the "tiles", painting a cream colored seam in between them. Lastly, I painted darker shadows on the sides and bottoms of the "tiles". then, I put on a couple coats of polyurethane. In four years, it only needs two tiny touchups. It looks just like Saltillo tile. People walk in and don't realize it is painted. And everyone told me those years of art school were a waste!

:D

[Longhorn]

13. C'mon, now!

:D

[Arkansas Granny]

10. I saw someone paper a wall once with brown paper. Like your

description, they tore the paper in random sizes, wrinkled it a bit and put it on the wall with wallpaper paste. After it was dry it looked like patchwork leather. As I recall, they used paper bags and they might have used an acrylic spray to finish it.

[melnjones]

11. I have got to try that somewhere in my house.

Maybe the kitchen...over the old nasty tile...

[Dora]

14. I want to do this.

The cats (okay, one cat in particular, that naughty puss) have driven us to tear out our living room carpet. We cannot afford to replace it with wood, laminate, any other sort of material that must be bought and installed. This is a problem because we want to list our house for sale next month...

This "leather" flooring sounds like a great idea. I already have a roll of brown paper from Home Depot that I've used in crafts. My thought is that using paper from a roll would elminate the problem of seams or creases from paper bags that Warpy mentioned abovethread.

How much time would a project like this entail, I wonder, and how much prep work should be done to the bare concrete beforehand? I'm thinking I should fill the divots from the carpet nail strips, but could I stop there? The concrete is spotted with wood stain and paint from when the house was built in '58. We've scrubbed up all the glue from the carpet installation.

Do you think I could do this in a night, if I drank enough coffee?

[NMDemDist2]

15. you may be able to set the first coat in a day but it will take several

coats of the poly coating to get the desired effect I should think

and you'll have to keep the cats completely out of the room for several days, lest you have kitty foot prints all over your floor

[DawgHouse]

16. I've seen this on walls but never on floors!

If anyone does this, I'd love to hear how it comes out!

[grannylib]

17. I saw a picture of that in a magazine once (Country Living , maybe?) and

it was gorgeous...

[Whoa_Nelly]

18. Link to basic method on how to do this

Link:
http://www.thebudgetdecorator.com/faux_leather_floor.html





And this one is for "how to" on walls:
http://www.trompe-l-oeil-art.com/faux-leather.html

[ourbluenation]

19. Here's a pic

[blondeatlast]

20. That looks great! Would it work on a high trafficed patio?

I just posted a request for patio floor covering ideas before I'd read this thread.

The patio would be a "bridge" from a pool to the house and back. I suspect with all the poly coating it would be quite hot though (we're in Phoenix) and somewhat slippery for wet feet.

What do you think?