Rustoleum RockSolid Retreat Room Makeover

**I was compensated for this post, but as usual all thoughts and opinions are my own**

*This post may contain affiliate links*

Whew! It has been a minute hasn’t it?! I know y’all thought I just abandoned this little blog but I promise I didn’t. I’ve just been SOOOOO busy with several projects all at once. The main one is this ROCKSOLID RETREAT for my 12 year old son, Landon. When Rustoleum contacted me about partnering with them to create a “rocksolid retreat” using their Rustoleum RockSolid Floor Kits I was so excited! We knew immediately we would put the RockSolid on an interior floor.

The room looked like this BEFORE:

It was the only room in our house that had carpet and it was N.A.S.T.Y. Dirt, stains and well….it was brown. The walls were a terrible blue color and we lived with it like this for nearly 5 years.

Now it looks like this:

Of course, the first and BIGGEST thing we did was pull up the carpet and carpet pad. Our house was built in the early 1950’s and we were told when we bought the house that there was concrete under the carpet. While that was technically true, there was also 9×9 vinyl tiles adhered to said concrete with 60+ year old mastic. Thanks to a sweet blog friend, we decided to test those tiles for asbestos the same day we found them. Thankfully, they scored at less than 2%, which meant as long as we kept them damp while pulling them up, they were safe to remove. Joel, my husband, and Landon pulled the tiles up no problem at all one Saturday while I was at work. That’s when they found the black mastic tile glue.

We don’t necessarily shy away from hard work but I almost called it quits on this! It took 3 weeks, THREE WEEKS, to get the black mastic off the concrete floor. Many, many hours of scraping, washing, scrubbing, sanding….all on repeat. We did finally learn a little trick to get the mastic up somewhat easier, by using WD-40. We used a pump sprayer to spray a light layer over 1/4 of the floor then used a steel bristled brush to scrub, scrub, scrub. Lots of work. Good thing I have an amazing son and husband that worked their butts off and never once considered giving up.

Next it was time to patch the concrete. You will patch any cracks or holes. In our case it was lots of holes or “pits” from carpet tack strips. Alllll the way around the perimeter. But, we were in it for the long haul so I stayed up late one night and patched. Rustoleum recommends their concrete patch, which is a 2 part kit. You mix them 2:1 then fill in the holes like you would with spackle on the walls. However, I couldn’t find Rustoleum’s patch in my Home Depot so I bought a different brand. For the love of all that is holy, DO NOT buy any other brand than Rustoleum’s patch for this particular project. The next day we went to etch (see below) the floor and all of said patch pulled up and there were granules of it everywhere. Not cool. So I spent yet another 2 days cleaning that disaster up.

Then I went back to Home Depot and found the right patch, ooops!!

Before we put the patch down we decided to etch the floor. We used the powdered acid that comes in the Rustoleum RockSolid kit to “etch” the floor. This opens up the pores of the concrete, so basically a facial for your concrete floor to prepare it for the metallic epoxy. You then mop, mop and mop some more. You want to be able to rub your hand across the concrete and not get any dust on your fingers. The floor then dries for a couple of days. Just make sure it’s completely dry!

Now is the time to patch with the RIGHT patch. Do as I say, not as I do!

In review:

1. Etch Floor.
2. Clean floor, repeatedly until there is no more dust.
3. Patch Cracks and Holes in floor.

Now you’re ready for the RockSolid (which you can read more about here)!! The directions are pretty simple, just follow those and you can’t go wrong. Once the liquids are mixed, you add in the metallic tint and mix with a paddle mixer attached to a drill. You cut in first and then roll your epoxy on then go back over it and make little swirls with your paint roller. Here’s a super helpful video:

The floor is dry for foot traffic after 8 hours and vehicles (if in the garage lol) after 24 hours. Not long to wait at all. We actually wound up doing 2 coats, which used 4 kits. We did this for 2 reasons. One is that some of our mastic just would not come up, so it was really dark in some spots. And the second reason is the concrete patch showed through still after our first coat. Your results may vary.

The finish is AMAZING. It’s hard, shiny and beautiful. Ours is not perfect and we are okay with that. There are spots where we clearly didn’t clean the best and it isn’t smooth and then there are dark spots where some pitting wasn’t filled with patch. Again, it’s not perfect but we are okay with that. I wanted this room to have an industrial loft feel, and I think I accomplished that while still sticking to my minimal style that I love so much. There are still a few projects I need to finish up in here but I will share those over the next couple of weeks as they get done.

Besides the floor, there was no surface untouched in this room. We pulled out the baseboards, painted the ceiling and walls, changed out the light fixture, then put in new baseboards. I also painted the doors (and windows) that lead out to the front of our house black. This bedroom has no closet so I will be adding in a bar for Landon to put his hanging clothes on.

I will share how we built the sliding door later this week. I LOVE how it turned out and it is not what we originally intended to do. I love when that happens! Do you know what time it is now?

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!! You could win your own Rustoleum RockSolid Kit and a $500 Home Depot Gift Card!!

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