Paper Floors: An Eco-Friendly, Frugal Idea

As I wrote earlier, we did some small, frugal repairs and remodels to our house, only out of extreme necessity, and spending the bare minimum. We are in the process of foreclosure (still not notice as to when, so for that we’re thankful) but we had some cracked plaster walls, and a few other issues. One ongoing issue was our horrible hard wood floors, which were like wood chips in some rooms (especially our master bedroom). The cost of fixing said floor was to be in the hundreds of dollars, if we were to do a wood laminate. The floors were not salvageable on their own.

The old hard wood floors are clearly in bad shape, before I did the paper flooring.

Enter Pinterest. I know it’s a joke of sorts that we only feel creative while on Pinterest, when actually we’re spending time on the computer. But, for me, Pinterest has thus far proven to be a source of awesome inspiration of the frugal sort. I simply search the items I have on hand and see what comes up for craft projects.

While cleaning and decluttering, I found about a half dozen rolls of brown craft paper, and two gallons of elmer’s glue that I forgot about, stuffed into the back of a closet. (among other things, of course)

So, searching Brown craft paper, I found a project for redoing your floor with craft paper and Elmer’s glue-all. Perfect. Praise God. The original post that I learned how to do this from is located here.

Even more surprising, my husband said this sounded like a good idea. His reasoning was, we’re going to lose the house anyway. Might as well let his crazy redheaded wife try out her scary sounding ideas on a house that is no longer ours.

I know what you’re thinking. What on earth??!?! Is it sturdy? How does it feel? What does it look like? is it durable?

I know what my mom is going to say. YOU GLUED PAPER TO YOUR BEDROOM FLOOR!??!? Kimberly Ann, I raised you better!

(Growing up I frequently glued things to other things…causing most of my mom’s gray hair in fact)

I didn’t want to post about my kraft paper flooring project until it had been 2 months. Well, it’s been 2 months. I love it.

How does paper flooring feel? Soft, smooth, comfy. Organic.

What does paper flooring look like? It really doesn’t look like some idiot glued paper to the floor.Okay, maybe a little, but not unless you know that’s what I did.

Is the paper flooring durable? Well, it survived me sliding furniture in. It’s held up to my rolling desk chair. So far, it looks great. I’m still paranoid about letting the space heater sit on it, or anyone spilling anything on my paper floor. But, it seems quite durable.

There were a few spots on the floors, where there was deep gashes and holes. I filled those with wood filler, a little bit at a time, to smooth it out.

Mix Elmer's Glue with 3 parts water, in a large bucket or tub.

To get started, mix the glue with water. It should be about 1 parts glue to 3 parts water. The instructions I found said to use Elmer’s Glue All. You can usually find this in large containers at stores like Staples and Office Depot. The room is about 15 x 16 feet. I used about 5 rolls of craft paper and just over 1 gallon of glue. I also used 1 and a half gallons of Poly Acrylic finish. That was the most expensive part!

Now, rip up your paper. I kept mine in pieces of about a foot square, but with ripped edges. I used the smooth edges against the wall. Stick the paper, one or two sheets at a time, into the glue, squeeze out, and lay flat, smoothing it as needed with your hands. The kind of paper I had (post consumer craft paper) disintegrated quickly if I left it in the water/glue mix too long, so I had to work fast, and only do a couple pieces at a time. Another roll I had (not recycled) held up better.

It goes without saying to not wear good clothes when doing this. My overalls were stiff as a board by the time I was done from all the glue splashed all over me.

Getting Started with craft paper flooring

Like a puzzle, I did the edges first, and worked backwards towards the door.

This is what the floor looked like once I was done laying the paper down. This process took two hours and one pot of coffee to do, between my daughter Anastasia and I.

There's Stasia working on the paper flooring.

Biggest surprise of this project? How long it took for the paper to dry! I was pretty amazed. I planned on doing it one night (we worked until 9 pm) and then being able to start doing the poly on the craft paper flooring the next day. Instead, it took nearly three days for it to fully dry. I’m not sure if the weather is a factor.

As you can see in the lower left corner of the picture, there’s a wee corner popping up from the craft paper. This happened all over the floor, and was starting to stress me out as I watched it happen. Thankfully, I was able to go onto the floor very gently (as it had no poly on it at this point, and was still a bit damp) and use diluted glue and water (leftover from soaking the paper — I put it into a small elmer’s bottle), and a paint brush, and I secured those stray corners of my craft paper flooring.

The floor, at this point, looked really scary awful, as you can see. I was having remodeler’s remorse.

The website I got this project off of said you could also stain the paper after it was done, but I didn’t have any extra stain laying around, and besides, it was cold outside and stain is smelly. If we were staying here long term, then I might have.

Once the paper was fully dry, and all corners and edges were glued down well, I started to use water based poly on the floors.

Now as I said, this was the most expensive part of the craft paper floor project. I thankfully had about three quarters of a gallon of the water based poly in my basement from another project. This stuff runs about $40 per gallon, but unlike regular poly, it doesn’t stink, cleans up well, and it dries really fast. I was able to do about 6 coats per day. The label recommended 1-2 hours between coats.

After we had about 10 coats on the craft paper floor, all was again right in the world. The floor looked a lot better. It feels very smooth.

Craft paper flooring

I was worried, because of the condition of the floor under it, that I’d have some rough spots coming through the floor. Instead, I can’t even notice them.

Looks good, doesn’t it?

What nifty projects have you discovered by way of Pinterest? I’d love to hear!