DIY Renter-Friendly Old Vinyl Floor Makeover

Brainstorming ideas on how I could do this in a renter friendly way, I thought about the ram board that I used to create a dramatic textured black wall in my bedroom. It's meant to be used to protect floors during construction so it's very sturdy. Since the rolls are three feet wide, I would be able to cover the entire entryway floor with one piece. 

After cutting the ram board, I painted it with a coat of paint and primer combined that I had leftover from my office makeover. And because this will be on the floor in a high traffic area, I added two coats of floor paint in a light Arctic gray color. I found out the hard way that it's very important for that first coat of paint to have some primer in it. Otherwise, putting the "floor" paint directly on the ram board may cause it to dent or warp in some areas. 

After letting the paint dry overnight, it was time to tackle the compass rose design. I considered painting it but it would have taken me hours to get it just right, so I was happy to try out the Cricut Maker machine to make this part of the project go a lot quicker and easier.

It's so much fun to watch the machine cut everything so precisely and quickly. It only took minutes to cut both the dark and light pieces for my compass rose.

In comparison to the compass rose, this took me way longer to do having to tape and do several coats of the paint. Plus you can see that the edges were far from perfect and needed lots of touching up.

To secure the cardboard to the vinyl flooring, I used the same removable double sided tape that I used for my bedroom project. 

I also placed strips of removable double sided carpet tape in the middle of the floor, to make sure that the cardboard didn't lift off the floor. I chose this tape because it's very thin and won't make any indentation in the cardboard. 

I removed the tape backing only at the front edge initially to make it easier to line up. 

As I was admiring this new floor, I started thinking that having some black to the compass rose design would make it stand out a lot more. It only took minutes to reload the cricut maker machine and cut the new triangles in black.

After doing just the large triangles I felt like that was enough black so I decided to go with this version.

I also made the thin line of my border black but instead of painting, I used vinyl tape to make this part go quicker. 

The last step to protect the floor was to add two coats of glossy polyurethane. It gives such a nice sheen to the floor, and it also sealed around all of the edges of the vinyl pieces, so I can Swiffer the floor without having to worry about any of the pieces coming off.

What a difference from the original floor! and while I did like the two color Compass Rose, I much prefer the one with the black - I find it adds a lot more life and dimension to the design. 

You can watch the entire project in this video and go to my blog to get additional details.