So this was the laundry room and kitchen when we bought our current home. Clean and cute enough, but not really my style. The plan was after a year (hubby's rules) to do a major overhaul to the whole house and make it our own. Well anyone that knows me knows that I can not wait 1YEAR!! Seriously? A whole year? No way!
I am pretty good at making cheap, quick, easy and sufficient temporary updates with just paint. So that was the plan. I first painted the cabinets all white, then the countertops black with white speckles, as you can see they were 1960's green marble. Then I painted the vinyl floor to match. Yes, I said PAINTED THE VINYL FLOOR! (How is it that I forgot to take a good after photo of the countertops and kitchen? I guess because in my mind it wasn't done, it was temporary.) Oh well.
So I scrubbed the floor with TSP to strip the sheen, then taped off each center.
Then I rolled the black paint on and removed the tape. Five coats of polyurethane later I was done! Four coats over the black, one over the whole floor. 
I eventually painted the kitchen, laundry and dining room floor as they were all the same vinyl. We have knotty pine walls and the black on the floor was a good accent to the knots in the wood, plus I have some black furniture. (Pretend the diamonds are black...nice huh? LOL!)
But NOW a year has gone by and this is when the serious work begins! (BTW the black paint held up for about a year...which is not bad considering we have 3 medium sized dogs in this teeny tiny house and the paths we walk through the house are very limited and well used!)
So...anyway back to the overhaul. We discovered that the vinyl was glued down to 1/4" plywood, which was stapled to the original fir flooring. And when I say stapled...I mean stapled as in every...stinking...inch on the edges of EACH piece of plywood and about every 4 inches everywhere else! UGH! I was, AM, grateful they weren't glued down. However, where did they think those floors were going to go? Holy cow!
See those staples, and they are also an inch apart on that left edge that is still to be torn out as well!
Since I have just put the top coat on the laundry room/new bathroom floor I will continue with that particular floor...here it is. Yep...SCREWED DOWN LIKE A DECK!!!
WHAT? How on earth does one cover that without having to stain the entire floor in a dark stain? Why not dark? Dark floors are lovely. Except they must be cleaned 24/7! That is out of the question when living on a farm, with 3 inside/outside dogs.
Hmmmm...what to do? Well, counter sink all the screws of course, then fill with wood filler and sand the whole floor multiple times.
But then what? How can I hide the polka dots that will all be lined up nice and neat?
My only answer is to try to camouflage them. These boards are the only floor. There is not a subfloor under them, you can see them looking all pretty on the ceiling in the basement and they are complete boards from wall to wall, not pieced together. How do you camo that? By giving the illusion that each board is a random length! So I got out my knife and square and randomly cut gouges to make it look like the boards are separate.
Then I stained them different colors making sure to stop at the cut marks to signify a new board. I only had 3 colors to use because when I got started I realized that I had bought too many dark colors which was NOT what I wanted. Oy! So I dumped half of my weathered oak (the gray looking boards) in with dark walnut to make a lighter walnut, and half of the pecan in with red mahogany to lighten the red. Problem solved!
It's certainly NOT my first choice for a floor. I really love 100+ year old homes and that is the look I am going for in this house. This does look kind of cool, but I think it is a very trendy look and I will hate it in a couple years, but we didn't have many options at this point. (Also I have already done this look back in 2009 when we had a similar problem on the last house...see that here.) But it is what it is and once the fixtures are in place and the walls are done hopefully it wont be the focal point.
Stay tuned for the final reveal...in a couple weeks :)
Kelly
