My Creative Blog:
Flooring

It's true- most people have heard of vinyl peel and stick tile. We both have used it in our homes in the past. But, what's also true, is that most people have never thought to create an awesome herringbone pattern with that tile! These tiles are ridiculously easy to cut which makes it the perfect material to go crazy with pattern! We have to say that this floor is one of our favorite projects to date- we transformed this dated floor into an expensive, slate-look-alike.

To say this flooring was dated would be the under-statement of the year. It was yellow and green and oh so bad! Even though the kitchen was tiny, we didn't have enough money or time to go with real slate tile.

Instead, we got our DIY on… Lowe's sells lots of vinyl peel and stick tile and while it does actually look like stone, when installed the traditional way it looks good, but doesn't have a big wow factor…

So, we had an idea… This flooring comes in 18x18 tiles- we decided to cut each tile down into three 6" strips per tile. Vinyl flooring cuts easily with a utility knife- Just score it and then fold it to divide.

We cut down all of our tile into strips and then measured to find the center point of the floor. We used a chalk line to snap a guide for us to follow.
Then, to give it a unique and high-end look, we laid the tile in a herringbone pattern. You just make"L's" over and over again. It's one of the easiest patterns to do!

How's that for a before and after?? And, honestly… these pics don't even do it justice! You definitely have to watch this segment of the episode! (Here)

I honestly was amazed and how good we made inexpensive vinyl look. It's like it was all dressed up for prom or something! Fancy!

Changing out the flooring played a big part in making this tiny kitchen renovation complete! No one would ever guess that this flooring was installed with some of the cheapest materials on the market! Changing the shape of the tile and the installation layout gave us amazing style, without the expensive price tag!

Jess and I had so much fun working on this episode of Knock It Off - We transformed this baby's nursery from crazy, blinding pink into a kid-friendly version of a loft space- we called it a"soft loft."

To check out the full video of this episode, click here
One of the biggest projects in this space was painting the hardwood floors. The floors were pretty beat up and actually had planks going in all different directions. It took a little convincing, but eventually we got both homeowners on board with the idea of painting their hardwood.

The first step was to sand the floors. You need to get off any gloss, because the paint won't adhere to the floors if you don't. We rented our sander by the hour and it took less than an hour to do the whole room. $50 later we were all done!

Once we were gloss-free, we whitewashed the entire floor. We wanted to cool the tone down a bit- sometimes warm oak can seem a bit red-orange. We used 3 parts water to 1 part paint. This step goes by super fast using a roller and an extender pole.
Just make sure you don't paint yourself into a corner! lol Start at the far side of the room and work towards the door!

After the whitewash had totally dried, we used painter's tape to mark off our pattern. I won't lie, this was tedious and almost made me poke my eyes out a few times. Of course we couldn't have just gone with a plain old pattern, we made ours cool and funky. Actually the taping was easy, but figuring out what color went where actually had me and 3 guys on our camera crew going nuts!: ) I think they thought I was losing it.

Here's the pattern we went with. It's just a combo of diamonds and lines, but it gives a fun, 3-D look and we like the combo of diamonds and some herringbone-ish arrows!

We used mini foam rollers for each of the colors. We use a coral, charcoal, greige, navy, and the whitewash color that was the base. The mix of colors is where it was tricky to get the pattern down. What I recommend is using a sticky note or little piece of painter's tape in each shape to make sure you have the colors laid out right before painting.

When each square had two coats, we had one awesome, show-stopping floor! It was so much better than the damaged hardwood and had to much more of an impact on the room!

There were tons of fun projects in this room! Check out our KIO DIY page to see more!

Click HERE to visit the Knock It Off homepage to watch this full episode!
So, do tell… would you be on board with painting your old hardwood floors or not so much?