Concrete Floor in Laundry Room- What says the horde

[nwhiker]

So the prior owner removed a bunch of VTC tile that was in the laundry room leaving it with the slab and a little leftover glue. The room has a floor drain, boiler, water heater, and water softener. My initial thought is to clean the floor and them prime and paint. This seems to be the easiest. Any thoughts if it would be better from a value perspective to do something else. My main concern is with all the mechanical equiment I would have to hire someone to do the flooring install so the flooring could be placed under the equipment. Otherwise the flooring I installed would interfere with the slope to the floor drain.

Anybody think they would get turned off by a painted concrete floor in a laundry room. We aren't looking to move anytime soon, in fact this might be last home.

[nereo]

Anybody think they would get turned off by a painted concrete floor in a laundry room. We aren't looking to move anytime soon, in fact this might be last home.

I think you answered your own question.  If you have no plans of selling anytime soon (and perhaps never), stop worrying about what some hypothetical buyer in the distant future might want.  Styles change and even the hardest wearing floor will show wear and tear after several years, so whatever you put in there now will largely be irrelevant.

If you are ok with painting the floor I'd just do that (and for the record I'd be find with that for a laundry room). If you change your mind down the road and want to put down tile or engineered flooring a painted concrete floor is about the same starting point as an unpainted one.

[Telecaster]

I have a painted concrete floor in my laundry room, so that's a yes vote.   You could also do a polyurea coating (not polyurethane) that would be more durable and likely look better. 

[Papa bear]

Or you could go with an epoxy or acid etched concrete floor


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[ApacheStache]

Any thoughts if it would be better from a value perspective to do something else.

If you're talking about ROI when you sell the home, don't go overboard and don't count on getting much if anything out of it other than aesthetic and intrinsic satisfaction. Unless a home's laundry room floor is a complete trainwreck, a laundry room floor is probably one of the last things a home buyer will factor into a home-buying decision. I would consider how many times you go into the laundry room or see the laundry room floor on a weekly basis and then consider if it's worth spending N hundred or thousand dollars on the project. I probably go into our laundry room 200-300 times a year, so I probably wouldn't spend more than $200-$300, if anything at all, considering it's a laundry room in the basement that maybe gets used for less than 5 minutes per visit.

[lthenderson]

Depends greatly on the basement. Many basements don't have a vapor barrier underneath the slab so moisture slowly wicks up through the concrete and causes paint to peel. You can check this by taping a piece of plastic on all four edges down to your floor for a week or two ahead of time and see if moisture builds up between the plastic and the concrete. I have seen people use latex paint. Don't use latex paint on your basement floor. One scuff of the shoe and it will start peeling. You need to use paint specially formulated for concrete. Some outdoor porch floor paints will also work. The key is doing meticulous cleaning preparation ahead of the paint and most people don't do that properly. I certainly wouldn't paint or epoxy over glue residue.

In general, I don't like painted basement floors. Basements have a high number of boxes being dragged around, heavy mechanical equipment, etc. that are being drugged, pushed, moved around and they are always scuffing, scratching, peeling up the paint. To keep it looking nice, you are forever, prepping and touching up the paint. Epoxy systems are better and last longer. Personally, I would just get a grinder with a wire abrasive wheel and remove the glue down to fresh concrete and leave it as such. With a concrete surface, there is never any maintenance. Then if you don't like it, you can decide at that point to paint it since it is almost properly prepped for paint at that point. Also like others said, unless you are moving within the year, don't worry about the resale value. That is a question best left for closer to when you move.

[BudgetSlasher]

I do not think that painted/epoxy floors in what amount to a utility room will put off any hypothetical future buyers.

[Sibley]

If you're unable to properly and thoroughly prep the concrete for painting, then don't bother. It won't last. (Speaking from experience here)

[Monocle Money Mouth]

If you're unable to properly and thoroughly prep the concrete for painting, then don't bother. It won't last. (Speaking from experience here)

Yup. The previous owners of our house painted the basement floor to cover the glue from old asphalt or asbestos tiles they removed. They used floor paint and it has mostly worn away. There are spots that have worn back down to the glue and some back down to the bare concrete.  Unless you don’t mind repainting the floor frequently, you’re just creating more work for yourself.

If you can get back to bare concrete, that is probably the best solution from an appearance and maintenance perspective.

[Sibley]

If you're unable to properly and thoroughly prep the concrete for painting, then don't bother. It won't last. (Speaking from experience here)

Yup. The previous owners of our house painted the basement floor to cover the glue from old asphalt or asbestos tiles they removed. They used floor paint and it has mostly worn away. There are spots that have worn back down to the glue and some back down to the bare concrete.  Unless you don’t mind repainting the floor frequently, you’re just creating more work for yourself.

If you can get back to bare concrete, that is probably the best solution from an appearance and maintenance perspective.

Previous owners painted the floor fire engine red, which had faded to safety orange. With brown walls. Yes, it was as ugly as you're imagining. I cleaned it up as best I could and painted the floor blue-grey, knowing it wouldn't last because I couldn't do the prep necessary. I've got carpet pieces over most of it to help with the cold. Currently in process on a project to redo the room (out of necessity), and I'm going to put LVP in.

[Monocle Money Mouth]

If you're unable to properly and thoroughly prep the concrete for painting, then don't bother. It won't last. (Speaking from experience here)

Yup. The previous owners of our house painted the basement floor to cover the glue from old asphalt or asbestos tiles they removed. They used floor paint and it has mostly worn away. There are spots that have worn back down to the glue and some back down to the bare concrete.  Unless you don’t mind repainting the floor frequently, you’re just creating more work for yourself.

If you can get back to bare concrete, that is probably the best solution from an appearance and maintenance perspective.

Previous owners painted the floor fire engine red, which had faded to safety orange. With brown walls. Yes, it was as ugly as you're imagining. I cleaned it up as best I could and painted the floor blue-grey, knowing it wouldn't last because I couldn't do the prep necessary. I've got carpet pieces over most of it to help with the cold. Currently in process on a project to redo the room (out of necessity), and I'm going to put LVP in.

That sounds terrible :D People do weird stuff to basements.

[AMandM]

Our utility room floor had broken old tiles and glue over concrete. For complicated reasons, we were required to seal it. I scraped off the old tiles, stripped the glue residue, and painted it with garage floor paint (the kind with speckles that you sprinkle over it while the paint is fresh). Several people have commented on how nice it looks. Honestly, I love it quite out of proportion to how important a part of the house it is. It is much brighter and fresher looking than the dirty old tiles and concrete, and it's smooth and easy to clean. It's lasted two years so far and looks like new, admittedly in a little-traveled place.

It was not a lot of work--scrub the floor with the stripping solution, rinse off (easy if you have a floor drain), let dry, paint, sprinkle the speckles. Surface prep is important.

[Ch@d]

I acid stained my entire basement several years ago.  I wanted it to look finished and if my basement floods or has a water issue (which we have), I only have to worry about mopping it up.  it turned out looking great and has held up well.

[dcheesi]

I had a very similar setup with a raw concrete floor in the basement utility/laundry room. I just put down a run of decent looking peel & stick tile starting in the doorway and running into the open middle of the space, stopping in front of the washer & dryer. I left the rest unfinished. The main point was just to keep the view from under the closed door looking nice (rest of the basement was finished), and to give a better foot-feel for laundry users.

The house still sold. Of course I'll never know if it would have sold quicker or for more money if I had finished that floor properly, but my hunch says no (my initial problem was getting views in the first place, reactions were favorable for the few that looked).

Technically, I should have used better tile with grout/adhesive underneath, but that was beyond my DIY skills/interest at that time. And the original owners had used peel & stick in the basement bathroom (some of which I had to replace), so it wasn't out of place or a drag on the overall quality of the basement finishings.

[zolotiyeruki]

It's a mechanical room, so it doesn't have to look fancy, but nice is good.  "Nice" to me would mean tidy, clean, and well-lit.  And it bring little benefit if one aspect of a room is upgraded but the rest is spartan.  A nice finished floor doesn't do much if your 100 sq foot room is lit by a single bare bulb with a pull-string.

[nwhiker]

It's a mechanical room, so it doesn't have to look fancy, but nice is good.  "Nice" to me would mean tidy, clean, and well-lit.  And it bring little benefit if one aspect of a room is upgraded but the rest is spartan.  A nice finished floor doesn't do much if your 100 sq foot room is lit by a single bare bulb with a pull-string.

Yeah it is also the laundry room and you walk through it to get to our 1/2 bath. So we want it to look nice but don't care if it is fancy. I will make sure that I will seal and prime it before painting.

[Sibley]

Re nice looking lighting - I have a drop ceiling in mine. Put one of the new LED overheads in. LOTS of light, low energy usage, and it looks clean. Not fancy, but clean.