DIY #2

My most recent home-improvement project was the result of shitty weather and curiosity. January in the Midwest, with a thermometer reading of negative 15 degrees, and a wind chill temperature of some ridiculous number below that, had me trapped indoors just long enough to tip back a corner on one of the basic brown square vinyl tiles in my office. While I was hoping to find the treasure of hardwood underneath this 50-year-old covering, when the square cracked in half, it revealed plywood covered in adhesive only comparable to the slime that oozes out of Jeff Goldblum when he was The Fly in 1986.

I’m going to start right off the bat by saying of course I would prefer hardwood or shiplap floors, but in the interim I don’t want to:

• take the time to measure or be precise
• buy new tools
• need help
• shell out $$$

Therefore, ripped paper bags it is! The paper bags couldn’t get any less expensive-literally free when you ask for paper bags when you buy stuff nearly anywhere. I don’t have the patience or memory for that, though, so I ended up buying 2 packs of lawn size bags at Walmart for less than $5 total. The only drawback to the bags was having to rip around the Walmart logo as I didn’t want blue in my brown floor. My sister-in-law used craft paper when she completed this project and reported that it is not as thick as actual bags, so may require extra layering.

I’ve completed this project twice before on different surfaces: sub floor and on top of vinyl tiles. This is a key factor with this project. My bathroom had peel and stick vinyl tile which I decided to cover up, considering I was beginning the project on Thanksgiving night, post vodka tonics, which made ripping things not seem like a great idea. A few months of water coming over the edge of the tub lets me know I will be revisiting that floor once again on one bored day in the future.

Although I normally enjoy the destruction phase of projects, this time, not so much. Some of the tiles peeled off in one piece, but others, as you can see in the picture, broke off in tiny increments, requiring a scraper to chisel off small pieces one at a time. I tried wearing gloves to protect my knuckles, but they stuck to the tiles. My 14-year-old tried walking through the room once during the Big Peel; her shoe stayed on the floor while her foot stepped out. We were human rats on a trap. (Please note: Part One of Paper Bag Floor, especially if ripping up sticky vinyl tiles, is not recommended on a day that you are experiencing any type of PMS, hormonal imbalance, or stress.)

After vacuuming (and yanking the vacuum away from the stickiness) I was finally able to begin the fun part:

• Put on disposable gloves ($2, pack of 10).
• Mix equal parts of Elmer’s Glue and water in a rectangular plastic bucket. The glue was $20 for a gallon and lasted the entire project.
• Rip a piece of paper bag (no measuring).
• Scrunch it up in a ball.
• Open it to lay flat and saturate in the mixture.
• Squeeze it until it isn’t dripping a lot.
• Overlap pieces in a haphazard fashion to cover the entire floor. Smooth out each piece, making sure none of the paper is folded. (The top edges of bags create the perfect straight line for walls and edges of the room. The plywood had visible lines of marker and dirt, so I covered those areas twice.)

Once the entire floor is covered, it takes 24 hours to dry. I had to complete the project in halves because the office is the only room with access to the kitchen and laundry room. (We don’t mind wearing ‘softly worn’ clothes in this house but we gotta eat.) I put a fan on the floor to speed the drying process, but this created the first glitch of the project. The fan blew air along the edge of paper that ran down the middle of the room and created an air pocket in the floor. I discovered this at 1 am in the morning, tossed and turned for about half an hour, and then decided to rip up the bubbly section. (A few small bubbles beyond the big section were able to be fixed simply by popping them with a safety pin & re-wetting them with the mixture.) Thankfully, this project is not about precision, so the only tell-tale sign of this snafu were the bags under my eyes the next day at work.

After a full 24 hours, the floor was ready for Polyurethane. This is the most expensive part of the project, at $40 a gallon, but it doesn’t take much and I had some left over from the hardwood floor project (DIY or Don’t?). I used a paintbrush that I already had for the edges of the room; an expensive one isn’t needed, but one that is so cheap that it sheds bristles would not be ideal. (Another note on shedding: if you have long hair, keeping it covered up during this step is a good idea. Once a piece of hair dries in the shellac, it is there for life.) I began with foam rollers, but noticed after the first coat that it was drying with streaks, so I switched to a 1/2 inch nap roller, ($7) which did the trick. I gave the floor 3 coats of polyurethane, letting each one dry for 2 hours before applying the next.

The project could have been completed in under a week, but the bubble ordeal coincided with my niece suggesting an awesome book that I couldn’t put down (Educated by Tara Westover) so I was forced to take a week off between the two halves of the room. This honestly was a God-send because I struggled to walk normally for 3 days after the covering-the-floor part of the process. Finding places to overlap saturated bag pieces & then smoothing them out = lots-o-squats. My frequent gym visits include: elliptical, running, stairs, squats, leg presses, etc. but that gym (a.k.a. Ivan Drago) workout is nothing in comparison to the Rocky workout. Home projects and gardening are the real deal.

For under $100, I definitely recommend the Paper Bag Floor to create a new look on a floor while waiting for the flooring of your dreams. The sub floor in my bedroom (the winner for best surface for Paper Bag Floors so far) wouldn’t pass FHA loan inspection, so this project was perfect for a quick, inexpensive fix. (The inspector thought it was linoleum). The look has been compared to the look of leather and my 14-year-old daughter said it had a “beachy vibe.” I think it would be ideal for a garage that isn’t used for parking a car, a basement, or a screened-in porch, and is the perfect project for anyone desiring nicely toned thighs.