Paper bag treatment for concrete basement floor

11 years ago

Have you guys seen any of the web pages talking about covering floors with torn up grocery bags or pieces of brown craft paper? You tear the edges to make a deckled edge, crumple the paper, dunk it in watered down Elmer's glue, then smooth it down on the floor. After it dries, you can stain it if you like, then coat it with multiple coats of polyurethane. Everyone says it makes an inexpensive hard wearing slightly resembling leather flooring.
Many people claim to have done concrete basement floors in it with no problems.

We have a concrete basement floor that has a thin scraped residue of some sort of carpet or vinyl adhesive (very small trowel marks, white In color).

I'd be thrilled to have a smooth durable flooring since I work with stained glass there and the texture that is there, even though very small, still is enough to trap tiny glass shards and make cleanup difficult.
I don't usually like crafty finishes, you are not going to find me sponge painting walls etc, but this finish to my eye doesn't look terrible. Just google paper bag floors, hundreds of examples pop right up.

I know that concrete floors allow moisture to transpire, so does it sound like this could really work? We eventually want to put in heated tile floors, oe a heated concrete floor, or maybe eventually some sort of hardwood. So I don't want to find out down the road that my cheap crafty solution has actually caused a much bigger problem.

Thoughts? Could this work and be durable? Will it cause a problem with future options?

Thanks for any help!

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Comments (7)

glennsfc
11 years ago
Anything you apply on the substrate at this point must come off when you change your flooring...except if you replace it with a floating floor of some kind, most of which I personally don't like. Floating floors are not adhered to the substrate, so there are no bonding issues.

I don't know how this would work either, because you are correct in stating that all concrete slabs emit moisture, especially those installed on or below grade.
User
11 years ago
I'll second glennsfc's answer. Those were my concerns exactly.
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User
11 years ago
Crap idea that will create nothing but problems down the road.
gregmills_gw
11 years ago
Although i agree with everyone above. I guess my concern would be the number of coats of poly you would need to lay down?

Doing this type of "craft" idea is solely because its easy and cheap? Well it seems like just painting the slab would be easier and probably cheaper ( in the long end)
doug_gb
11 years ago
What a potential mess. Paper bags and Elmers gule - does this idea come with a warranty? Just think you are sealing papber bags to the slab. If you get moisture under there the paperbags desintergrate.

It's going to take considerable Elmers and poly. I bet you could install some water based epoxy floor paint for the same price.
kiki_thinking
Original Author
11 years ago
Thank you for the feedback : ). I just really wanted a cheap smooth surface, it did sound too good to be true..
pbarky
10 years ago
I have now done two rooms with concrete subfloors using this paper method. My floors are not completely smooth, probably due to my application. I used 10 coats of water based poly for sealant. It is very slippery which is my major concern. I used contractor paper from Home Depot and an Elmer's glue water mixture. I used a little over 1 Gallon of glue and less than a roll of paper and less than a gallon of poly for a 12x12 room. The appeal of this method is the cost and look. I didn't want the look of a painted floor. This looks similar to leather or stained concrete. I won't do a floating floor because of pets. For me, it is a temporary fix for FILTHY carpet which smelled. I'm hoping to get a few years out of it. The labor is extensive. I had to pull carpet nails and scrape and prep the floors. The papering itself is time consuming too. But I am extremely pleased with the outcome. I scraped my floor with a putty knife after papering and before applying poly to search for loose spots and knock down wrinkles. The paper came up off the concrete fairly easily pre-poly. I can't imagine it would be any worse than scraping all the carpet adhesive was. I may have a mess down the road--only time will tell. For now it is a very low budget but attractive fix for the nasty carpet.