We pulled up our first floor carpet and
painted our floor white some time ago. I love the way they look; however, my daughter has made short work of them - they are stained from all her projects and heavy play. We never sealed them with poly, which would have been best for stain resistance. The polyurethane smells horrible, and I didn't want to deal with the fumes. I thought about floor wax which I still might try. So I need to repaint them, and was inspired by this olive color for the floors. As soon as it warms up, I think I'll try this color! Despite the need to repaint, I am very glad we have concrete painted floors. If we still had carpeting, the messes would have been incredibly difficult to clean. As it is now, all I have to do is mop with a heavy commercial looped string mop and it's clean - minus paint stains and heavy wear areas(computer bench seat area). When you homeschool, the house gets a lot of wear! This is especially true with younger children who tend to be very hands-on and free spirited with their learning.
Another option would have been to stain the concrete and seal it. If you don't mind fumes and dealing with caustic chemicals, this is an excellent option for hiding stains and reduces the chance for scratched paint.
If you can rent and use a commercial sander, the concrete floor will be less pitted and much easier to clean. I tried to get the husband to do this, but we are both too old and tired to tackle this. ; ) Our surface was fairly smooth, so we just painted over it.
We have had laminate in our kitchen for 14 years, and it has held up beautifully. Laminate or some other solid surface overlay would have been a much better choice, but we were looking for the least expensive, least time consuming avenue to DIY easy-clean solid surface floors. I'm happy to continue this option for now, and maybe when the children are older, I'll deal with laying down polyurethane. It's nasty stuff...we'll have to leave the house for a few days while several coats of the stuff dries. I'm not ready for this now.
I've got this site, Lit2Go linked on my sidebar. Today we used a first grade readibility level print-out for the nursery rhyme, Pat-A-Cake. At the link is an audio version, a PDF illustrated black and white page of the rhyme, and a worksheet. All are free to print and use.
I got this cart, Household Essentials Jumbo 3-Tier Metal Cart with Wheels, White
, on Amazon for my daughter's homeschool items. I store it in the corner when not in use, and pull it out to where we decide to do our work - it changes from day to day. I can even roll it outside on the concrete. The trays are deep enough to hold standard sized paper and workbooks, and wide enough to store paper and workbooks on the same shelf. I've got them going two different directions to fit(see picture).
So we must be very dirty because my Fuller String mop head needed replacing in only three months time! I had to go with a commercial looped string mop which really works well and is lasting longer. It is large and heavy, and requires a professional mop wringer, but the weight of the mop does much of the cleaning for you. I also tried a stronger cleaner, LA's Totally Awesome concentrated cleaner(ammonia and bleach free) from the Dollar Tree. This put a shine back on the painted concrete floors and got up a lot of my daughter's glue and paint. I used it on the laminate floors and got good results as well. About a four of a cup of it in a bucket with hot water is all I needed for heavy floor cleaning.
See how the strings are looped and tied across at the end? This makes them last longer because they don't unravel and tangle. The string mops that are cut across tend to fray and disintegrate.
