Hand Painted Wide Stripe Floors

Wow! I painted my floors myself! And you know what? It was surprisingly easy.

Creating wide stripes is super easy and creates a casual elegance that is just plain yummy.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

Supplies & Materials

Pencil
T-Square
Scotch Brand 3M Painter’s Tape
9″ Paint Rollers
Painter’s Trays
Padco Floor Trim Pads (Floor Sealer Applicator)
Annie Sloan Decorative Chalk Paint (Old White and French Linen)
Varathane High Traffic Floor Finish in Satin Finish

So, here you go. A nice blank canvas, and a lovely idea of how you want those floors to look.

Step 1: Paint the Base Coat Color

I painted the floor a base color that was a darker than the alternating color. In my case, I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, a custom blended color of 3:1 French Linen to Old White.

Step 2: Determine the Control Line

The control line is the one line you measure out and use as a reference point or straight line in which to measure the other lines off of.

The walls are not perfectly straight, and the wall ends halfway across the floor, so we chose a control line that goes from the from door all the way to the back wall. This control line was also used for painting my checkered floors.

Step 3: Determine the Width of Each Stripe

In our case, each wide stripe needed to be 14″ wide. We did this because my floor transitions to a floor that has painted checkered squares on the diagonal. Those squares are 28″ from point to point across. You can see in the photo above that two wide stripes span the width of each square. This creates symmetry.

Step 4: Measure From the Control Line & Tape

To simplify this process, we measured from the edge of the tape, out 14″ and marked the floor with a pencil. We did this on the far end of either side.

My husband stood on one end and held the end of the tape, I unrolled it and went to the far end of the room (note that we have not put the tape down on the ground properly yet). We each held the tape taut and applied it to the marks on either end and literally eyeballed it.

Since there was already a base coat, we only had to paint the alternate colored stripes. This part is important: to keep the stripes perfectly wide at 14″, we applied the tape to the inside of each mark on the stripes that would be gray (the base coat). If you look closely, you can see that every other stripe is a little narrower than the others.

We marked the skinnier stripes with a piece of tape so we knew not to paint them. You can see that below.

Step 5: Paint the Stripes

We mixed the paint in a custom blend: Annie Sloan Chalk Paint 1:1 French Linen to Old White.

I poured the paint in a painter’s tray and used a 9″ smaller roller to roll out each stripe. By the time I finished all the stripes in the room, I was able to start from the beginning and apply the second coat.

Step 6: Remove the Tape

Pull up the tape and take a moment to admire your beautiful handiwork. Pretty awesome, huh?

Step 7: Seal the Floors

Once the floors were dry. I put on a clean pair of white socks, and used a Swiffer mop head with old t-shirts instead of a pad to ensure that there was no lint on the floor.

I followed the instructions on the can of Varathane, and used a floor trim pad which is specifically designed for applying sealers with the least streaking and bubbles.

I poured the Varathane into a painters’ tray. I did not shake it or pump it, I just ran my brush gently into the tray and then in single strokes from the far end toward me, I applied the Varathane.

The important point here is to not move too quickly because you don’t want to create bubbles in the sealer. This is really explained well on the can of the Varathane and I can not stress enough how important it is to read the directions and follow them.

I started at the far end of the room, and “painted” my way to the exit.