Concrete Staining part 3

After the floor is cleaned, and taped off in the desired design the fun begins.

I want a light border tile followed by a darker inner border tile and the center to be earthy and brown but lighter that the border.

The first step is to sponge and dry brush on a semi opaque light color. I used a clear concrete stain and added white acrylic to make the color. go around in a random and unplanned manner dabbing and sponging your tiles. We wanted light and dark spots so I purposely add more stain to some places and less to others. Just stay on one side of the tape and keep a wet towel handy to scrub off any paint that gets away from you.

When the white drys the second color is added. I want to tie in my main color throughout all three different tiles I plan to paint. So I started with the brown stain I will be using for the center and main floor. To that I added a bit of yellow ochre tint-all as well as a bad of burnt sienna tint-all. Tint-all is a pigment that can be used in small quantities to color your paint, it is available in the paint dept of hardware stores, I got our at Home Depot.

Using a couple of bluebird tail feathers ( thank you my lovely cats) I began the rock veins, I followed behind and sponged them here and there to soften the look. To really add a natural look and depth to the stone, I went around a finial time with the brown but darkened it up with the yellow and a bit of tint-all grey. experiment and play, rocks in nature are not perfectly colored so neither should yours be. I used a fan shaped paintbrush to create the finial cracks and veins on my white border.

Inner Border, I mixed two batches of stain, the fist the brown stain from the main center, plus burnt sienna and yellow and a tiny bit of grey, the second a very saturated mix of the same three colors, but added a lot of grey until the mix was near gunmetal colored.

With the lighter of the two I went around filling the border with random darker and lighter spots taking care to fill my entire space, no grey concrete showing, and cleaning up any paint I got onto existing areas where it did not belong.

Go around with the darker stain but use a lighter hand so the light and the dark both show, but because I want this part dark I made certain the darker stain was more prominent.

Steve went around for the third layer with a clear stain with only yellow ochre and dry brushed here and there sparsely to add the rich depth we wanted.

The central tiles, here I mixed brown stain with a fawn colored opaque acrylic and my yellow and sienna tints, dab and blot it here and there until the surface is covered. Layer two for the center tiles was a white mix similar to the boarder but a bit more translucent. I just slothed it randomly and thickly here and there leaving some grey concrete exposed covering parts of the fawn stain, a very random and not planned pattern. Let it dry.

After it dried we taped off our borders with painters paper, the next step can be messy and splatter your other hard work so plan accordingly.

This was a two person job if your surface is large.

I took a weed sprayer the kind you pump, filled it with the brown stain and pumped it up until I could pump it no more. The stain is thick and if you do not pump it well you get big ugly splotches as opposed to a fine spray.

I sprayed the floor heavier in some spots lighter in others and Steve went behind with a roller feathering it out and smoothing the color.

We went around after the first coat and added some more color to places we missed or places that needed a little more color ( such as the glue line we did not completely remove and the spray painted J.A. that was on the slab.)

Let it dry... then remove all your tape and see the fruits of your labor.

After you have rested, sweep the area very very well, remove all the beasts from the house so they don't run through like our cat did. And seal the floor with a concrete sealer. Steve put down two layers, and we used a wet look, shiny sealer.

We are done, isn't it a beauty?