I've Lost My Mind

I went to the big box store yesterday and looked at vinyl plank flooring.  I had every intention of ordering enough for the bathroom floor.

But instead I came home, lost my mind, and started painting my bathroom floor.  Actually, that's somewhat inaccurate.  I came home, cleaned my bathroom floor, sanded the finish off of it, cleaned the floor again, scrubbed the floor down with TSP, and let it dry thoroughly.  All the tutorials I've found on the interwebs say you have to do all that before you start painting.  What they don't tell you is that all that stuff takes a really long time to do.  (Even if your floor's not as dirty as mine was.)  I started out sanding with 100-grit like the instructions say and realized I'd qualify for the senior citizen discount at Golden Corral before I got finished.  So then I used really rough sandpaper left over from refinishing the floors (it's probably 80-grit or even 60-grit) and I put it on my multi-tool.  That didn't take too long.  What took forever was running the shop vac, then mopping, then letting it dry, then sanding, then running the shop vac, then mopping, then letting it dry, then scrubbing the floor with TSP and letting that dry.  Patience is not my strong suit.

Pawprints in the primer

After I finished all that, I put on two thick coats of primer.  I used Zinsser 1-2-3 Primer because it's really thick and it covers well.  The pattern in the vinyl floor is navy blue, so I wanted to be sure it was all covered up.  Also, thick coats of primer help hide the texture and pattern of the vinyl floor.  I brushed it on rather than using a roller so I could get plenty of primer down in the texture of the floor.  I was just about done with the first coat of primer when the dog chased one of the cats into the bathroom and then back out.  That was not a fun clean up.  You can tell in the photo that one coat is covering pretty well, but I used two just to be sure.

While the primer was drying, I went to Lowe's and bought a quart of Valspar Porch and Floor Paint and had them tint it to Fish Story, which is a dark teal.  (I love paint names.)  Incidentally, my mom was with me and happened to be wearing light teal colored shoes, so she helped me pick out the paint color by comparing the chips to her shoes.  (I love my mom.)

Background color

When I got back home, I swept the floor just to be sure nothing had been tracked in by the fur-babies in my absence, and then I painted on a thick coat of Valspar Gilded Linen.  That's the same color I'm using for the ceiling and the trim in the bathroom.  I'm planning to stencil the floor, so this whitish color will be the lines of the design and the teal will be the main color of the floor.  I'm debating whether or not to put down another coat of this color before I start stenciling.

Second coat or no, the stenciling will start tomorrow.  I think I'd better do it in the daytime when there's more light and when I've had plenty of rest, because math is involved in the placement of the first stencil so that the whole pattern doesn't go wonky after that.