And that is what we did. This post is a step by step tutorial on how you can create your unique penny floor, but before you go and make your penny floor let me share with you the positives, the negatives and the big mistake we made.
Background:
It had only been a few months since we moved into our new-to-us house. The house was amazing. It was a tremendous four (potential five) bedrooms, two full (potentially an additional two-half) bath house. While it might have been cosmetically ugly, we saw the potential from the beginning. It had been several months since we sold our previous home and apartment living was plain annoying. We luckily had a great apartment but for anyone who has ever owned a home and then went back to apartment living knows just how shitty it is. So from the minute, we signed the closing docs the ideas started to pour in, much to Shaine’s liking of course.
I usually am the one to come up with all of the ideas and then leave it to Shaine to make them happen. But then there was this ONE time when HE looked at me and said “Hey Babe, this is cool. We should do something like this.” (Referring to a penny floor.) And even though he says he didn’t mean it, his words don’t lie. And those words resonated with me. I was obsessed, determined to find a place in our new, but very ugly, in need of a facelift home where we could replicate a penny floor.
This photo is what the bathroom looked like when we toured the house. Not the ugliest thing I have ever seen but also, not exactly a showstopper either.
Dreaming:
We had already planned to rip out the hideous green countertops that spanned all over the house. The kitchen, green, the master bath, green and of course the main bathroom, you guessed it, green. Being the real MSU Spartan fan that I am, I love me some green, but when it is installed all over my house, that’s a different story. We planned to replace the green countertop with a brand new quartz countertop. Which, side note — if you live near an IKEA, I highly, I highly suggest going and checking out their countertop section. I can’t speak for all IKEAs of course, but the one near us (in Canton, MI) was amazing. We were able to get two different orders of the quartz for a fraction of what we were quoted from other vendors. And the best part was… the installation was FREE. Now, remember each IKEA will have different selections depending on which local vendors they choose. The vendor that installed our countertop told me that if I were to walk into his store and buy the same thing I would have paid almost double. It is entirely worth checking out. Click here to find out more information about what products IKEA offers. They offer many different options no matter what your budget is.
Okay, tangent over… Back to where we were…
Like I was saying new countertops were already on the agenda but so was getting a new cabinet, new paint, and new flooring. It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but the cabinets were incredibly low. When I, who stands at a towering 5’4″, has to bend down to wash my hands, you know those counters are too low. We were able to find a tall white cabinet at Lowes that was on clearance for less than $100. I scooped it right up and prayed it fit. Thankfully my prayers worked.
Here you can see the new cabinet, the new paint color we choose and the old flooring. This picture was taken the night before the countertop, and new sinks were installed.
While I don’t have a picture of the new countertop and sink in place, you can imagine those upgrades helped. However, that grime white linoleum needed some help –> insert penny floor. We thought by doing a penny floor in this small, simple bathroom would help give it some character. And let me preface this when I say, THANK GOD it was a little floor.
Sweat equity:
Supplies you will need:
- Pennies, lots and lots of pennies. If you are good at math, you could measure how big a penny is and then multiply that by your square footage however that was too much for us. We just kept going back to the bank and requesting more. 😂 Pro tip, call ahead before going to your bank. We learned the hard way that banks don’t keep that many rolls of pennies in their vaults. In total, we used about 8,500 pennies.
- Adhesive – This is the kind we used. It was clear, small enough to hold in one hand and worked great.
- Black paint– Just a small quart will work fine
- Grout – THIS IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WE MISSED. Don’t be like us, pick up some dark grout; you will soon learn why.
- Sealer – We used an industrial clear flooring epoxy, which most commonly is used on garage floors. This epoxy worked correctly because it was non-slip, matte and clear, so the color of the pennies was not altered.
- Patience – And a lot of patience
[I’m sorry for not having a lot of step by step pictures for this tutorial. We did this project before I started the blog]
Step one: Remove the trim and the previous flooring. In our case we (aka Shaine) scraped up the old linoleum, leaving just the subfloor.
Step two: Paint the subfloor black. Even though you are going to lay the pennies on the freshly painted floor, it makes the colors of the pennies pop when the space between each penny is dark.
Step three: Start in the corner of the room, place a small dot of adhesive directly on the floor and lay your first penny. You want to make sure you push the penny down firmly but not too much that the glue starts to spill out over the edge of the penny.
Step four: Repeat step three but this time place the next penny to the left or right of the first penny. Continue this process over and over again.
And yes, you are reading that right. That small teeny-tiny corner next to where the toilet would take over one thousand pennies.
It’s not necessary to stay in a diagonal line if you don’t want too, but we found it to be much easier to do it because we were always able to position the next row of pennies in the crease of the two pennies above it.
Step five: Once you have finished covering the entire floor in pennies you then move onto grout. Like I mentioned earlier this is the step we missed. We loved the way the flooring turned out especially with the black floor beneath, which is why we did not even think to grout it. While grout doesn’t necessarily help the pennies stay put, it does fill in the seams from the subfloor. Since we did not grout, we have one small (but noticeable to us) line where the sealer dripped down through the crease in the subfloor into our basement. — Which is entirely preventable with good ole grout.
Step six: Pour and smooth the clear epoxy. We started in the same corner we laid the pennies first. Start by pouring a generous amount of epoxy. Once you have a small part poured you’ll then use a clean paint brush or a roller depending on your preference to spread the epoxy evenly. We probably used way more than we needed but we wanted to make there was more than enough.
Step seven: Re-install trim. And then sit back and enjoy!!
And Ta-Da, the finished product. The floor is super shiny but still non-slip.
Total cost:
- Pennies – $85
- Adhesive – 6 tubes total, $30-ish
- Black paint – FREE (used what we had around the house)
- Grout – (Not sure, because we were morons and did not do it)
- Sealer – $165 for a big bucket
- Patience – FREE, but a lot of bruises and time (over eight hours of time) on your hands and knees.
- A total of $$280 but would guess around $350 if you have to buy grout and paint.
Reality:
We still have a few projects left; painting the cabinet above the toilet, making a fake drawer in the cabinet and framing out the mirror before the bathroom will be ready for its full reveal. But for now, we like to stand in the doorway and admire our hard work. — It has been about a year since we finished the penny floor and we still love it (probably more) than we did the day we finished. It has held up correctly. The epoxy has not bubbled, changed color or started to peel. Every time we have guest over to our house the first thing they want to do is see the bathroom. If you are looking to make one in your home, I say go for it. It is a cheap alternative to tile, wood or even laminate and it gives your home a fun, unique feature.
Make sure you set aside enough time, energy and of course, as always grout! Happy DIY-ing friends!
If you have any questions, post them below, and I would be more than happy to help.
This is so cool!