Well, the tide has turned in the battle against the basement floor: I’m winning.  In fact, it’s a route.  I am so happy with how it’s turning out so far I really can’t wait to finish it and see the whole thing.  And I know Karen really can’t wait to have the laundry room back – it’s currently full of everything that used to be in our basement, and has been for the last… oh, two months.  Way too long.

So here’s the rundown:  Tuesday after work I rented a 5" hand grinder.  I’d decided to grind the parts of the edges and corners I’d missed with the previous (second) rental of the walk-behind grinder, and then chemically remove the last bits of pain.  (the second time I used grinding stones which worked pretty well but again couldn’t negotiate the bumps and curves of the floor)  After doing the edges and seeing how good it looked, I had to do the whole thing: 7 hours of horrible hands and knees grinding, shaking out and emptying the shop vac every 10 minutes, etc, etc.  But it looked great by Wednesday morning!!  It also removed the whole top layer of discolors cement and roughened up the surface enough it would take the stain really well.

Various busy-ness and mishaps kept me from getting back to it until the weekend, and early Saturday I was off to buy the stain and some masking tape.  The taping actually took a lot of the day (see at right), but I wanted to get it right and have an even pattern.

By Saturday evening I had about a third of the main pattern in place, and it was looking very good.  I was tempted to press on, but my back was killing me from all the bent over work and spraying and taping, so I called it a night.

Sunday Karen had off work so she came down to help and it started going much quicker.  She would use the cardboard masks to shield the edges up to the tape, spray a base coat using a hand-sprayer, reposition the masks, etc, until the square was filled.  Then I’d come in with my accent colors – dark and light – and rag roll / blot in some texture and pattern.  As the afternoon progressed I started doing some touchup on the last night’s work and found a really nice "vein" pattern that looks sort of like granite or marble.  Really sweet.

At left is where things stand tonight.  I’ve still got to go down and tape the edging for the next round – we’re filling in the grey with a really nice deep red, "Terra Cotta" it’s called.  I’m going to leave a 1/4" overlap of unstained cement, which should look like a grout line in tile, I think that will help the pattern pop a little more.  Finally the intersections will be stained a dark grey or black, which will also help provide some visual contrast.

Did I mention I love it so far?  I love it.  I’m going to make out with the floor when it’s done.  You can come watch.  $5 at the door.

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