DIY Checkerboard Tile

The tile you choose when you don't want to have to choose tile

The back of our first floor boasts one of the most enviable spaces in our house - a spacious and open butlers pantry (with a laundry room and powder room, to boot) 
The cabinets in this room are wonderful, but once you get over the *idea* of the pantry, it doesn't do much else to shine. 
A few months ago I was invited to a house party by a friend of the host. While I think my house is awesome, it was built as a middle class home and didn't come with many bells and whistles. This other house, however, was built around the same time as mine and has many similar features but was clearly built to be a show stopper over 100 years ago. From gorgeous, hand poured stained glass windows to intricately etched stair rails, this house was a stunner! 
I tried to peep at as much of the house as possible without looking like a total creep. Unclear if I succeeded in the second part. But I did notice that they also had a pantry/mudroom/powder room just behind their kitchen. Among other highlights of this surprisingly beautiful, yet highly functional space was a large scale checkerboard floor. As soon as I saw it I knew that my pantry was getting a facelift. A floor lift?

---

Does not spark joy.

Might actually spark misery.

I had already used Rustoleum interior floor paint on the attic steps. Once I realized there was actually a matte top coat I could use instead of the glossy sheen I had initially purchased, I knew this plan was happening. 

The hardest part of this project was timing. Once the top coat is applied, it has to cure for 24 hours before you can walk on it at all and a full 7 days before it can be treated like a normal floor again. We were heading to DC for a weekend of birthday celebrations and going away parties so I worked backwards from there. 

After cleaning and prepping the tiles I painted everything white. I really wasn't sure what I was going to do regarding the grout but I knew I didn't want any part of the original tile to come through so it made sense to have a totally blank slate. 

I did one coat of white and then marked the tiles that were going to be black with painters tape. We tried our hardest to stay out of the pantry during this week but we were always playing some variation of hopscotch depending on what was happening. Blue tape means its ok to walk on...kind of...

---

The base paint, even when fully dry, remained tacky so EVERYTHING stuck to it. If we had pets in the house this would have been a total disaster. I had pointed an oscillating fan into the room to help it dry quicker and I soon realized it was blowing tiny pieces of lint and dust and it was sticking to the floors. I'll be honest, a lot of pieces of dust just got painted over and will live on this tile for all of time. It's fine. 

I tried a few ideas for painting out the black tile. It was certainly nice to already have the outline in place but I wanted the tile to look like it had always been that color, not that I had painted it. Free hand was no good, I even took a spare tile that had been stored in the basement and tried to use that to paint a straight line over the grout, but ultimately I knew I was going to have to invest a little more time into the prep work or else I would regret it. 

So I used the Baynan Bridges line painting technique. I taped out each tile I wanted to paint black and then, to get the straightest line possible, I painted the taped edge white. The inevitable imperfections of gaps in the tape were now filled in and the risk that the black paint would seep through was almost entirely eliminated. This was well worth the time to prep it and I will use them technique for ever after.

After the tiles were painted, I used a roller with a broom handle attachment (thats probably not what its called but you get it, right?) and brushed on the top coat. We headed out of town and by the time we came back we could safely walk on the floors. 

I love the outcome. Some might argue that I'm obsessed with it. It brings so much character into the pantry and it flows beautifully with the rest of the first floor. I love looking through my living room and kitchen into the pantry and seeing this floor. Serious upgrade from the boring beige that was designed to never be looked at!

---