In some homes, the floor is the only thing that remains unchanged. It is the same colour, in the same place, no matter how many times you paint or remodel. However, in other homes, the flooring is new every week. One week it is hardwood, the next week it is laminated, then tile, and soon enough, the floor will be checkboard, where the pattern changes every day.
It is good to change the look of our floor as a home improvement. Also, when we have that sorted out, we can look to install a heated electric flooring system from floorheatingsystemsinc.com. This will have us feel a lot warmer when the heat is coming from beneath.
Checkboard Floors as an Idea
When you think about it, checkerboards are an interesting idea. Take the classic pattern, for example. It makes sense, and it is easy to follow: Each square is a different colour. That is a good start, but a checkerboard floor can be so much more than that.
Checkerboards are typically used as flooring in restaurants and shopping malls in public areas. They are also an integral part of the look of many children’s rooms worldwide, and the name comes from the checkerboard pattern painted on the floor. The pattern is classic for kids’ rooms, but there is more to checkboard floors than just that.
A checkboard floor is a term for a flooring method in which all the planks have the same thickness but have different widths. This can be accomplished in several ways. One trendy way is to have a concrete slab with thin vertical checkerboard-like cuts, where each plank is a concrete slab. The pattern of the flooring is created by using a series of small squares that are high enough to prevent people from walking in the grooves of the checkerboard pattern.
The checkerboard pattern does several things for the rooms in which it is used, including helping to hold the floor in place, providing a visual barrier to the floor above and below, and minimizing the noise from tile floors below. In addition, checkerboarding helps to keep the moisture in the flooring and have the flooring last longer, as well as being a low-maintenance flooring option.
How to Make Checkboard Floors
If you are trying to make a checkboard floor for your home, you are going to need to know how to paint, so here is a step-by-step guide on how to paint checkboard floors:
First step: First off, we should all start by prepping. You should make sure to vacuum and wash your floor thoroughly and with efficiency.
Second step: When you have properly prepped your floor, we move on to sanding and/or de-glossing. For many people, using a de-glosser is preferred. If you ask around, many will probably say that sanding is such challenging work and can be messy, but if you want to try sanding, it is also perfectly fine. This is a crucial step because you will get better adhesion.
Third step: You can start adding a black gel stain. Make sure that you brush on three layers so that you will be reassured that the black pops out; with this, we recommend that you use a 5” brush instead of a roller. Why? Because with a brush, you will be able to work the stains into the grooves.
Sure, most of the time, people start with the light colours first, but when it comes to painting checkerboards, you should beware of stain bleeding through. After you are done with coating with the black gel stain, wait for one day to let the floor cure before you go forward with the white gel stain.
Fourth step: You will need to choose where the starting point will be. When you are doing this, always remember to use a peel and stick tile as a template and bring along painters’ tape with you to help with marking off the floor.
Fifth step: Lastly, with the help of the template, it is time to fill in all the white squares. Pretty simple last step: during this last step, we recommend that you use a 12”x12” peel and stick tile. You will need to tape one square at a time and then apply a white gel stain after removing the tape. Using gel stains is much better since they only bleed a little.
Tip when cleaning: Always remember that gel stain is oil-based, most of it. We recommend using old paintbrushes if you do not want to go through the hassle of cleaning little messes with mineral spirits.
When you are in between coats, wrap your brushes in a plastic bag and then store them in your refrigerator.
Heated Floors
Electric heated flooring is a way of producing radiant heat that will keep you warm from the floor up. It is energy-efficient, does not exacerbate allergies because it does not work in a way that blows out particles, and is cheap to install because you can do it yourself. It produces no noise to annoy you and will be minimal maintenance to make it even more cost-effective a home improvement. In terms of the pleasure it provides, it is a heating system that means that the underfoot warmth will be consistent wherever you are within a room.
It is comforting to know that we can create a floor for ourselves that looks good and then heat it to feel good for another reason.
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