How to paint a wooden floor

Looking for a studio and choosing the right one was quite hard. The studio with the best light wasn’t the prettiest one, so we had to have a great deal of imagination. The room was actually magnolia and had a blue carpet. It was far from ideal as a photos studio, but when we realised that the carpet wasn’t glued down it became more appealing. Underneath was an old wooden floor. It wasn’t a perfect wooden floor, but it was workable.

I’ve made a little tutorial out of this , so here’s how to prepare and paint a wooden floor.

As the was a lot of carpet glue left on the floor we had to clean it with White spirit and scrape the glue off the floor. This process took about 3 hours. You need good ventilation and masks as the white spirit smell is really strong. You can see the huge difference in the 3rd photo. As you can see it was a mess before we cleaned it. We then left the floor to dry for a couple of days.

The next step was to sand the floor. This was done in order to make sure all the glue and varnish had been removed. My husband kindly helped. He first sanded it with coarse sandpaper and then finished it off with fine paper.

After all the sanding was done the floor was cleaned again to make sure all the dust was removed. I then painted the walls to avoid spilling any paint on the newly sanded floor. As the ceiling hight is 4 meters it was a bit of a challenge. On the walls I used Dulux matt white and to my surprise I only needed done coat.

Now, onto the floor. I used Ronseal primer and undercoat as the first coat. It was easy to apply. I started off painting all the edges with a paintbrush. I painted all around the entire room. Then went onto painting the floor with a roller. Once you have done a couple of coats it’s much easier, not to mention quicker to do the rest. I painted two coats with the primer and undercoat and then finished it off with floor paint (Ronseal floor paint) again I did two coats. It’s important to let the coats dry properly in between coats, so I normally painted one coat in the morning and came back the next day to do another coat.

I’m really pleased with the result and think the hard work has been worth it. No more magnolia walls! It’s taken a while, but we’ve now moved in. Can’t wait to show you more. The green plants love this room as it’s so nice and bright.