Hello!
Welcome back to part 5/6 of fixing my sunken front porch. This part of the 6 step series focus on the painting I did on the steps. This part would have taken me probably half of the amount of time it did, if I could make up my mind lol.
The steps had been painted before. Im not sure what was used to paint them the first time, but they were pretty worn down and chipping badly.
I ended up repainting these steps more times than I care to admit, but am very happy with the end result. Here are the supplies I used:
Materials:
- Wire brush
- Paint stripper
- paint brush for stipper
- paint brush
- epoxy paint
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I have created a youtube video of the whole process here as well if you would like to watch instead of read.
Step 1: prep
Pressure washing. The first thing I did was pressure was the steps. I was hoping that this would do more than it actually did. I spent quite a bit of time pressure washing these stairs, and although it did remove a lot of dirt the paint that was there did not come off.
This resulted in me having to use a stripper to remove the rest of the paint. I liked this stripper because it was sprayable although I didn’t have a garden sprayer that I could dedicate to just this chemical so instead of chancing the possibility of mixing chemicals that shouldn’t mix I just painted it on with the old cheap paint brush. I poured the stripper into an old pickle jar and dipped paintbrush in and painted it onto the old paint. I let it sit for a couple of minutes and then used a wire brush to gently scrape it off.
It came off very easily and didn’t take much time at all. It was kind of a repetitive task so that did take a long time, but the actual removal of the paint was very easy.
Step 2: Painting
I did way more steps and I needed to on the porch because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. I had some black concrete stain sitting in my basement that I purchased off of a discount shelf not that long ago. I thought maybe if I could use a product that I already had then I could save some money on the overall cost of redoing these front steps. So I used a paint brush and began applying the concrete stain. It was a semi transparent stain, and it went on very smoothly. Although after one coat, I felt like it was very blotchy, and it looked terrible.
I didn’t even feel like doing a second coat would be worth it at this point. So I went back to step one and re-stripped all of the black concrete stain off.
It came off just as easily as the paint did the first time which tells me a couple of things. Maybe I should’ve used something else while prepping to edge the concrete surface so that it would better except things like stain. Some thing like a muriatic acid would do this. I didn’t do this step though, because I didn’t think I needed it. Another possibility is that there was some kind of sealant or paint on the steps from years ago that wasn’t allowing the stain to penetrate as deeply as it needed to. Stain should not come off with a paint stripper like this did. Because of the way the stain works soaking into the porous parts of the concrete surface it shouldn’t be able to be scrubbed away.
So I’m glad overall that I decided to take it off as it probably wouldn’t have held up in the long run. After I removed the black concrete stain and search the stairs for the second time they looks like this.
Step 3: Re-paint
So after getting them to a spot where I could paint again, I opted to use an epoxy garage floor paint from Behr. I chose color foggy morn to try to match the gray and white stripes that we already had above our front door.
When I started painting, the color looked more cool and blue than I had expected. I didn’t feel like it matched the stripes above the door, and I wasn’t very pleased with it.
So I didn’t paint all of the steps. Instead, I stopped after a coat on the top step and decided to re-tint the paint.
While I waited for that, I painted all of the risers white with a separate white epoxy paint for Masonary. I thought matching the stripes of the front door, alternating white and gray were tired all together. The black paint made it look like a giant hole in front of my front door and I didn’t like it.
When I went back to the store, I got it re-tinted to be the color wet cement. Since I had just poured a concrete step, I thought this matched it very well.
Yes, you will see that I started this project without a concrete step and ended it with. I was so frustrated with how many times I ended up stripping and repainting these steps that I took a break and moved on to another part of the project in between. Sometimes that just happens on projects and you need a break from some thing that isn’t working.
Overall, I was very happy with the color wet cement and the paint went on very easily. It wasn’t gloopy or sticky in anyway. I used a small angled brush and cutting into all of the edges and corners that I needed.
I didn’t use any kind of taping or anything like that on this project. I honestly think that taping is kind of a waste of time and can be done with a steady hand and an angled brush most of the time.
That’s all I did for the steps. It was a long drawn out process, but it didn’t have many actual moving parts to it in the end. If only I would’ve done it correctly the first time.
But I’m very happy with the way they turned out and can’t wait to share the final part of this front porch makeover, which is the full flower arch above the door and adding the numbers. Stay tuned for the next post.
-Amanda