We left 2 floors unfinished in the house – the master bath and the utility room. I knew I wanted to paint a concrete floors specifically the utility. I’ve been mildly obsessed with the idea since I’d seen these floors on Little Green Notebook. I couldn’t wait to DIY at the new house, so I just went and painted the concrete floors in the utility room. And you can too..

So here’s the before since every dramatic makeover needs a picture like this. I’m standing on the other cabinets to give you a feel of the room.

I used Mandi‘s tutorial on how to paint concrete. I patched a crack with some quickcrete. I missed several holes…oops. Who knew a new floor would have so many holes?? I sanded the floor down with 80 grit paper to prep for the paint!

I picked up a gallon of Sherwin Williams Porch & Floor Enamel in Pure White (same color as our walls). I literally just poured it on the floor and rolled.

Now to nail the pattern down. I knew I wanted something geometric…and 3D. Nick made a parallelogram (did you prep for a math lesson?) in illustrator. You can download the template here. I cut it out on cardboard. I started at the door and worked towards the wall for the first row. Basically I used the handmade (slightly ghetto) stencil to trace, flip, and trace again for each row. I used my quilting ruler when I drew the lines though because it was cleaner than the “stencil”.

Once the first row is set, drawing the pattern is much easier especially with the quilting ruler.

I started hand painting…with a craft brush for the outline of the parallelogram. I painted about 20 like that. It. Took. Forever. I was pretty good about getting the line fairly straight, but it wasn’t perfect. Sidenote: I’m not left handed. I just needed a picture.

I switched my strategy to frog tape. Surprisingly it saved me a ton of working time even with having to tape. I did have to do 2 rounds of taping per color. You can see some of the hand painted ones versus the taped. The darker color is SW Blue Nile. It took 3 (!!!) coats. Thank God I taped, right?

It took about 20 minutes to paint the taped floor in comparison to the 20 minutes per parallelogram that it was taking me to hand paint.

Once the darker blue was finished, I taped off for the next color SW Ebbtide. I taped a row then skipped a row and taped the next row. That’s how I should have started with the dark blue, so do it if you attempt painting this pattern. Once I finished those 4 rows (2 coats for the lighter blue with at least 4 hours of dry time), I taped off the remaining rows and painted.

Pull off the tape and bam you’ve got yourself a gorgeous cubed floor. I got my craft brush out for touch ups. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to painting. There definitely a handmade feel because it isn’t perfect, but we find it charming.

There was lots of discussion about my floor amongst the subcontractors like, “woah it’s kinda 3D if you look at right,” “are you an artist,” “this is interesting”, and etc… I’m like dudes I’m sitting right here still painting the stupid thing stop walking on it!!

I put 2 coats of Concrete Sealer Wet Look from Sherwin Williams. I made sure no one walked on it for 24 hours with a house full of contractors that was not an easy thing. You can’t move furniture (in this case a washer and dryer) on it for 72 hours. Not a problem because I finished about a week before we moved in (yesterday)!