Owens Corning

Painting A Checkerboard Floor

Do you have an old linoleum floor? An unattractive wood floor? A badly stained floor? An uninteresting floor? Create an exciting new look by covering the floor with a two-color painted pattern of squares in alternating light and dark colors.

Sizes
For a large room the squares should be l2 or l4 inches. For a small area, such as a hallway, they should be about 4 inches.

Creative Color Combinations
Black and white
Forest green and white
Shaker blue and white.

Preparation
Thoroughly clean the floor no matter the material. You'll need a measuring tape, graph paper, pencil or chalk, straight edge, masking tape, paint brush, paint roller, latex or oil base paint and water base acrylic varnish (non-yellowing) to seal the floor. (Polyurethane yellows the white.)

Easy Does It
Measure the area to be painted and draw to scale on graph paper. Experiment with size of the squares. The size should divide evenly into the room measurement or you can have half squares or a border around the edge. Use a roller to paint the entire floor with white paint. Let dry. Start at the center of the room and working outward, rule off the squares on your floor. Use masking tape to screen off the areas around every other square to be painted with the dark paint. Brush the dark paint on the exposed squares. Let dry. Remove the tape carefully so you don't pull up the white paint underneath. Coat the entire floor with water base varnish.

Pickling Method
If you want the grain of the wood to show through use a country color oil base paint in blue, green, or pale pink with white. Thin the white paint with paint thinner and roll it on lightly so it just seals the wood but allows the grain to show through. Then backtrack and wipe some of the excess paint away with a dry cloth. Always go in the direction of the grain. Let dry

Copyright Leslie Linsley, author
Reprinted by permission HouseNet, Inc.

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