How To: Paint Your Tile!
Whew, I'm going to be honest- I thought this project would NEVER. END! Honestly, out of all the stencils, hexagon is by far the hardest. You have to line everything up perfectly and I still had to go over the "grout" lines with a thin brush. It probably took a collective 12 hours just to stencil the title. I would say don't do it, but if you are looking for a cheaper option then replacing your entire tile, this is definitely the way to go! Maybe just pick an easier stencil!
Items needed:
Step One: Clean your floor!! Sweep, mop, sweep again, mop again! Get your floors perfect!
Step Two: Tape off everything you do NOT want to get paint on. I knew I needed to paint our baseboards after because we held off on painting them in this bathroom until after the floors were done, so I only taped off the toilet and the bathtub!
Then it is time to prime! Do two coats of primer, waiting an hour in between coats.
Step Three: After letting your primer dry (approx 1-2 hours), you can do your first base coat of tile paint!
Step Four: Paint your tile with your base coat, using a foam roller! This is going to be the base color that is underneath your stencil. For our base, I went with this black tile paint. I painted two coats and made sure to let it dry for 8 hours in between!
Step Five: Now is the fun part! (or not so fun part, if you decide to go with the hexagon stencil!) If you are smart, pick a stencil that fits nicely over each one of your tiles. It will save you hours! But, if you are like me, a perfectionist who LOVES hexagon floor, be prepared to spend a solid 8-10 hours on this step. I actually did this in five different sittings over the span of a week. This is the stencil I used and this is the white paint I used. I applied it using a foam roller with about 3 light coats of paint!
I then went back over the grout lines with the black base paint and a thin brush because it bled quite a bit underneath the stencil. It is recommended to use an adhesive spray, but I didn't have any and our grout lines are pretty low so the stencil didn't lay flat anyways. If you can, I would 100% recommend getting a stencil that is the size of your tile!
Here is the progression:
To get the edges, the stencil I bought comes with a smaller piece so I used that to create the border around the edge!
Step Six: Once you have everything perfect, it's time to seal it off! I used this for the top coat!
Check out this before and after of our tile! You can do this with ANY stencil you want!
