Attic Office Remodel
The attic of our Iowa home had previously been used as a bedroom for the former owners. We wanted to update the space so it could be my studio/ office space. The walls needed painting, and I was ready to trash the brown shag carpet; it was so gross! At one point, this room must have been a playroom or kids room, because it used to be purple and there was marker stains on the carpet.
We completed this project in August 2019.
For some reason we started this project in the middle of summer in Iowa. If you’re not from the Midwest, there’s high humidity level that makes you feel like you’re roasting from the inside out. And luckily for us, this second story attic only had one vent. So this was a special sort of he** during renovations.
STEP ONE: remove carpet
This seamed easy enough, rip up the carpet, remove the carpet pad, pry up the carpet tacks along the edge. Cool.
Then we found this lovely vinyl/ linoleum tile underneath the carpet. ‘Alright’, I’m thinking. ‘We can work with this’. I figured we could either paint the tiles (if they were in good enough condition), or peel them up and paint the subfloor. We had considered laying laminate flooring, but we were trying to keep this a lower budget project so we could put our money towards other things in the house.
STEP TWO: remove tiles
We start to peel up the tiles and then realize ‘hmm I wonder if these are asbestos tiles’. At this point we stopped and had to call an asbestos expert to come test the tiles and the tar paper/ adhesives to check for asbestos.
**WARNING**please consult your local authorities regarding asbestos removal and disposal in your area. It’s very serious and can result in lasting injury (fibers in lungs that can lead to serious issues) or fines if disposed of incorrectly.
After about a weeks’ time (of course we tried to knock this out over the 4th of July holiday weekend and ran into the snag of waiting for results), we got the results back and no asbestos in the tiles themselves or the tar paper/ mastic/ adhesives. Yay!
There were a couple of tiles missing after we tore up the carpet/ carpet pad so we decided to proceed with peeling up the tiles. We could see there was wood floors underneath!
STEP THREE: scrape up mastic/ tar paper
After we found out there was no asbestos in these tiles, we had to figure out how to get the tar paper up. The tiles peeled up quite easily but we were left with this glue paper/ mastic/ tar paper (not sure the correct terms for it). We had tried to do some research on how to remove this adhesive and didn’t find much on the internet. Some DIYers bought a special tool that goes on the sander to sand it off. We tried some brush handles that went on a drill and if you pushed too hard it would easily ‘bite’ and damage the wood floors underneath.
The picture below on the left shows some of the soaking/ scraping tests. We tried Goo Gone, CitriStrip, and a wet rag to soak overnight. The only think that lifted the paper & adhesive was soaking it with a wet rag. Womp Womp. This was going to be a longer project than we anticipated.
We found some old towels in the cupboard, soaked them with water, and laid them on the tar paper overnight. Once the paper & adhesive was thoroughly soaked, it was easy-ish to scrape up with a putty knife.
We tried wider putty knives… but then we would scratch the wood underneath.
We thought we could try a scraper on a long broom handle so we wouldn’t be bending over… nope, again the planks were uneven so we needed a scraper that was narrower than each plank of wood.
The key was to have a soaking towel/ blanket and soak the adhesive for AT LEAST 12 hours. And the towels must be WET that whole time, not drying out. So we sometimes had to re-soak the towels during a 10-12 hour period to get the best results.
Finally I ran to goodwill to pick up a couple more blankets/ towels so we could cover more square footage. You cannot reuse the water once it got too muddy since you didn’t want to be ‘reapplying’ the adhesive you just scraped off.
And let me remind you, we did this project in July in Iowa. It was hot, we were on our hands and knees scraping tar paper off the ground for what seemed like an eternity.
And another note - we had to IMMEDIATELY clean up the pieces once we scraped up the paper. These were basically glue and if they dried even a bit, you had to RE SCRAPE THEM UP.
STEP FOUR: sanding
After all the tar paper had been scraped up, we rented a sander from Home Depot. This space is only about 300 square feet or so, and the sanding didn’t take long. Go over it with a couple different grits to scrape up any excess tar paper/ adhesive.
As you can see, this wasn’t perfect wood floors even after all that scraping. The outlines of the tiles are still visible since the tiles had been there for who knows how many years.
We had painted the walls at the same time that we were scraping the floors. I figured since we would need to sand the floors anyway, this would be easier since we wouldn’t have to put down plastic/ tarps to cover the floor.
Looking back, we then had to WIPE DOWN EVERY SURFACE after sanding, so, I could have probably painted after sanding. The dust was settling for another week or so.
After sanding, wipe the floors really, really well with a cloth before you proceed. Wait a day or two so the dust will settle and wipe again.
STEP 5: priming & painting
It was finally time to prime and paint the floors!!
PRIMER: We chose the PPG Gripper primer. This had great coverage and was good for stains, and covering ‘naked’ wood floors.
PAINT: BEHR has a Porch & Patio Floor Paint at Home Depot. There’s some pamphlets that this comes in what looks like 30 colors. I asked the guy at the counter and he said you can get it tinted in any color you want! So that was awesome! I chose Pebble gray for the floors in the Low-Lustre enamel Porch & Patio paint.
STAIRWAY:
After pulling the carpet off the steps, there were SO MANY TACKS to remove. For a couple hours a day for a whole weekend, I spent my time pulling carpet tacks from the staircase.
After all tacks were removed, we patched the holes with wood filler. After that dried, we sanded the patches, and caulked along all seams/ edges. Caulking is amazing. You can make any paint job look 100x better by caulking ahead of time.
I used the same PPG Gripper Primer on the stairs to make sure I had good adhesion. I used the same Porch & Patio Floor Paint by Behr in color Poppy Seed. It was a nice rich navy color to accent the Stone White walls & Pebble Gray floors.
These steps were not in perfect condition, by any means, but the fresh coat of paint gave them a facelift!
Here’s the finished product! This attic was bright and airy with the fresh coat of paint. You can no longer see the old purple paint coming through the splotchy walls. A couple coats of paint finally covered up the bad paint job.
This is a great new office/ crafting space for me!
