DIY Painted Canvas Floorcloth

DIY Painted Canvas Floorcloth

This spring I decided to tackle the dingy entryway of our 1910 row house in Brooklyn. As you can see, the floors are covered in what I would call “Band-Aid beige” tile. Ugh! While I would love to replace it at some point, that just wasn’t in the budget.

My solution came in the form of floorcloths: painted canvas floor coverings. If you’ve never heard of them, they are essentially super-durable paintings for your floor. You can buy pre-painted ones, but naturally I was attracted to the unpainted ones. You can even order them in custom shapes and sizes. I used several blank cloths placed together to form an L-shape so that they covered my entryway floor completely. I then used a geometric-patterned stencil to create the look of patterned cement tiles. Keep reading for all the details about making one of your own! –Megan

Photos by Lesley Unruh and Daniel Hakansson

*You can learn to make the light shown in these pictures right here! Megan shared the DIY for this project on DS today, too!

Click through for the full how-to after the jump

Here’s what you’ll need:

-An unpainted floorcloth

-One pint of Benjamin Moore paint in Black Tar

-One quart of Benjamin Moore paint in Storm

-One quart of Benjamin Moore paint in Overcoat

-One pint of acrylic polyurethane

-Stencil

-Stencil brush

-Small art brush

-2-inch paintbrush

-Spray mount

-Measuring tape

Steps:

Begin by marking the center of your floorcloth.

Next, lightly mist the back of the stencil with spray mount, and position the stencil so that it’s centered on the floorcloth. You can also use a little bit of painter’s tape to help hold it in place if you like.

Using your stencil brush, apply paint using a tapping motion until you’ve filled in the pattern. It’s important not to use too much paint when you’re stenciling.

Next, remove the stencil and repeat the process, lining up the pattern as you go.

This step is optional, but I wanted to add a couple of shades of gray to my pattern, so I choose to paint in some of the white areas using a regular artist’s paintbrush.

After I filled in the dark gray I added the light gray paint.

Once the paint was dry, I used the 2-inch brush to apply three coats of acrylic polyurethane to my floorcloth to seal the surface.

Want to read more about this before-and-after or looking for more ways to customize your home? Check out my Weekend Decorator page for tons of ideas!

PHOTOS: LESLEY UNRUH

How 2 photos: Daniel Hakansson

The Hallway: Before & After

Original article and pictures take www.designsponge.com site