On Sunday morning our porch still looked like this, with the peeling brick red paint that's bugged us for the entire six years (as of this month) that we've lived here:
By the time the day was over, it looked like this. The day was really over by the time it looked like this, by the way. I knew it was going to rain on Monday so I finished up this project after the kids were asleep, working by porch light in the freezing cold, wearing my moccasins and drinking a beer and being kind of compulsive the way I am when I get really excited about a home project.
Before I opened any cans of paint, I swept off the porch, mixed a bucket of OxiClean and hot water and poured it all over the porch, and scrubbed it with a hard-bristled brush. After I hosed it off and the porch dried, I sanded the especially crappy places (like below) and scraped off any places where the paint was peeling off badly. Then I caulked the big cracks and painted the entire porch Sherwin Williams's "Perfect Greige" using SW's Porch & Floor Enamel. This was the easy part.
The harder part was getting these stripes all measured and taped off. I made 12-inch wide stripes (just like the blogger from Our Vintage Home Love, who 100 percent inspired this whole project) and taped them off and painted the white stripes on (Sherwin Williams's "Antique White") one at a time. When I tried to tape off more than one stripe, I got confused, so I just took it slow and steady.
Worth the effort.
By the time the day was over, it looked like this. The day was really over by the time it looked like this, by the way. I knew it was going to rain on Monday so I finished up this project after the kids were asleep, working by porch light in the freezing cold, wearing my moccasins and drinking a beer and being kind of compulsive the way I am when I get really excited about a home project.
Before I opened any cans of paint, I swept off the porch, mixed a bucket of OxiClean and hot water and poured it all over the porch, and scrubbed it with a hard-bristled brush. After I hosed it off and the porch dried, I sanded the especially crappy places (like below) and scraped off any places where the paint was peeling off badly. Then I caulked the big cracks and painted the entire porch Sherwin Williams's "Perfect Greige" using SW's Porch & Floor Enamel. This was the easy part.
The harder part was getting these stripes all measured and taped off. I made 12-inch wide stripes (just like the blogger from Our Vintage Home Love, who 100 percent inspired this whole project) and taped them off and painted the white stripes on (Sherwin Williams's "Antique White") one at a time. When I tried to tape off more than one stripe, I got confused, so I just took it slow and steady.
Worth the effort.
The porch has been a work in progress for awhile now. I painted the front door last August, and more recently spray painted these cafe chairs white. (They used to be red.)
And I found these outdoor pillows at Costco last week. Two for $24, I think.
So ... I love my "new porch." And I love that paint can make anything feel all new ... and for cheap. There's still more to do--like put up that privacy wall I want,
and most importantly, new landscaping (we tore our old, dejected
landscaping out at the end of the fall)--but all in all I feel like this
is a huge improvement and way more us than what was there before.
