Staining the basement floor.

i first came across the idea of staining the basement floor, after stumbling upon Cathy Moore's story. i was searching for information on concrete leaf pressings, but found this page instead. i loved the way her floor looked, and also loved that it was created just using an inexpensive garden additive. So i shared the idea with Kenan. Unfortunately, the concrete had already set and it was too late to do score marks. So i started looking around at some other ways to finish the floor. i came across this site, which used an acid stain. However, rather than scoring the concrete they used 1/4" quilter tape to create the pattern that would simulate grout lines after the stain was applied. So we combined the ideas...not really knowing if it would actually work.




Kenan did a great job laying down the quilter's tape. Then i did the dirty work of applying the Hi- Yield Copperas. i put two coats on then let it sit overnight. In the morning we rinsed off all the excess, let it dry and then removed the quilters tape. We applied two coats of concrete sealer.

Some of the benefits of using Copperas are the extremely low cost. We paid $5 for the bag of copperas, and only used half the bag. The remaining copperas (iron sulphate) can be used on my blueberry bushes and azalias. It's orginal intended use is to lower the PH in acid loving plants. It is non-toxic, produces no harmful fumes or waste products like the acid stains.

It also produces rich earthy colors, reminiscent of red clay or marbled stone. It was difficult to capture in the pictures, there are no lights down there yet, and the flash made a horrible glare. We took a chance with it, as there was no guarantees on how it would turn out. However, we are really pleased with it.