Painted/Stained Concrete flooring

[Barbel]

Does anyone have stained concrete flooring in their home? Did you do it yourself or have a professional do it for you? Did you have to remove pre-existing flooring? Do you like it? Any tips?

We are so sick of our disgusting carpet and lanolium (sp?) flooring, but we can't afford to put tile or wood down and are considering this as an alternative. Just curious if anyone knows anything about it.

 

[Khrysty]

A few years ago I helped my mom's friend paint her concrete basement floor. We taped off "tiles" and sponged on a sandstone look. It's not really all that difficult, actually. You get a thin tape that covers what will eventually look like the "grout" for the tiles and make sort of a latticework of that..depending on how big you want the tiles to look, then get three or four shades of paint (sand, tan, light mauve, and eggshell worked well for us) and some rags and sponges. You work each tile individually, putting thin layers of color over other thin layers, until you get the desired look. When it was all finished, I assume she used some kind of sealant to keep the paint from coming off, but I didn't see that part. It only took us about four hours to do the whole basement and it turned out really well. She likes it a lot better than the linoleum flooring she had in there before.