DIY Paper Bag Floor: Preppin' the Paper and Floor

See the previous posts here
And So It Begins....
Planning and Materials
What Does it Cost?

Once we had the materials gathered, Erin and I started prepping the floor. As shown in the first post, Erin had to pull up the carpet tack strips which also made small divets in the cement. We decided to use some spackle mix she found in the garage to fill them.

You can really see how dirty the walls were. Yuck!

When we were done we realized the patches would take a while to dry so we decided to make use of the time and paint the room. The previous owners had been smokers and you could see the nicotine stains on the walls. For some reason when you remove all the furniture and carpet from a room you can really see how bad the walls are. It wouldn't be any fun to get a beautiful new floor with ugly walls. So we painted.

Erin picked a semi-gloss High Hiding White. I just call it white. Between the two of us it took probably 3 1/2 hours to paint the room's ceiling and walls. It is amazing how much better a room looks with fresh bright paint.

Erin went a little artificially gray from
her rambunctious painting skills

Meanwhile.......on the couch......

 

Sweet, Sassy Sally

Nice n' Naughty Norma

...our friends Norma and Sally were helping out by prepping the paper for the next step. They ripped up big and mid sized pieces of paper and crumpled them. Easy but tedious work. Good workout for the hands too! The typical size was about 18" by 18". It took them the better part of an hour to do this to two rolls of paper. This was a HUGE key to keeping us on track for the day's work. We enjoyed their banter and laughter, as always.


See the next post where I post lots of pictures of the process.

Where the Paper Meets the Floor