Renovate Brooklyn! Channeling Our Next Project.

I know, I know... First I need to finish the reupholstery of the chair, no need to nag. But once that's accomplished, I'm plotting to paint the living room floor. I had this stroke of genius (or I hope it was genius) that it would be fabulous to continue the checker board pattern from the kitchen linoleum tiles into the living room by painting the same pattern onto the living room floor in the same colors-- almost like an abstraction of the floor from one room to the other. Meta.

*In the photo at right, you can see where and how the living room and kitchen floors meet right now. Please ignore the tumble weed of dog hair in the living room portion of this photo. Seemingly house-keeping is also on the back-burner until my work load lightens up.


I went online and tracked down some examples of painted floors to bolster my enthusiasm and simultaneously convince any skeptical blog-readers, but I'd love to know what people think of this plan. Preferably before I take the time to tape the whole thing out in checker-board formation.

This might be a scarier undertaking if our floors weren't already so hobbled and sad. The saga of the floors began in June of 2004, when we moved into this apartment. Part of what made it so affordable was its wayward (aka. wretched) condition, which was particularly emphasized by the wall-to-wall grey-grit industrial style carpeting. This stuff was like walking on dusty, musty, very icky sand paper and served as a constant reminder of the parade of people who had lived in the apartment before us (most recently, a very old woman). We optimistically pulled up one corner of the carpet, saw wood floors, signed the lease, and got to work.


Sadly, it turned out that was the only corner with wood flooring and everything else was a mixture of vinyl self-adhesive floor tiles and bare plywood subfloor. We decided that was still preferable to the carpet and up it came and out it went. Good riddance!

I am embarrassed to say the floors pretty much stayed that way for the next 4 years. I tried to hide them below area rugs and runners, but there was no denying that we didn't really have a floor, just a surface that we were walking on. It wasn't until recently (about a year ago) that I declared that things had to change and boldly painted the floors white with a glossy white porch & deck paint that I hoped could contend with the constant running about of two quasi-adults and a very energetic pitbull. In its defense, it has actually held up reasonably well given the circumstances.

Point being, there is not much at stake except for my own time and energy (the former of which I seem to have too little of, the latter of which I seem to have an infinite amount of...) And if it looks like we're living in a psychadelic carnival tent when I finish, well I'll just roll another coat of white porch & deck over the whole affair and we're back where we started.  Eventually, we really want to install a wood floor throughout the apartment, but that will be the coup-de-gras at the end of this renovation.

In the meantime, like Mummy always said when I was a kid (and maybe thought a couple times this past week), I have to finish one project before I am allowed to start the next. No frenetic A-D-D-esque flitting about for me. Though painting the floor does seem far more enjoyable than continuing with the monsterous task of reupholstery............

Oh the perils of over-ambition combined with under-funding!