Kenilworth: Painting the Front Porch

In anticipation of Luke’s Open House last weekend, the kids and I took a week off and worked like crazy.

I had a list a mile long of all the things I hoped we could accomplish.

And then, a couple of unexpected items were thrown in the midst of my plans. Things like the free old white picket fence I have been searching CL for the last few months and found last week. The boys and I went and picked that up bright and early on Thursday morning. It’s still stacked on the trailer in the backyard, but we’re hoping to have it around Alix’s garden area very soon.

And then there was the free pea gravel, which I had been wanting for months, to put around the sides of the cobhouse. It was free because we had to go shovel it out of someone’s backyard playground (using 5 gallon buckets), dump it into Luke’s and Glenn’s trucks, bring it home and spread it. This took up an evening we had planned to use mudding the new area, but you just can’t plan ahead for things like free pea gravel and old white picket fences. They are here and gone quickly on CL and I had to snap them up while I could, no matter the timing!

Here is where I want to add how thankful I am for a non-complaining husband (and sons) who are willing to drop their plans for mine.

But one of the things that was actually on The List, was painting the front porch.

It was a big one!

I knew it was going to take a while, so I found myself shoving it to the back burner over the last few months. But now with the Open House approaching, I figured it was time to take the bull by the horns, and just do it!

I approached it like I do most things I don’t have experience with, by reading as much as I could about how other people have done it.

And then last Monday, a pretty, sunny morning, I went outside and started.

I swept the porch several times to get all the dust and debris cleared away, and the kids all helped me wash it with buckets of soapy water.

I didn’t even have to twist their arms on this, believe it or not, because they had a ball pretending they were my servants.

How could I argue with such ingenuity?

We let the porch dry overnight, and then the next morning, the twins and I used regular paintbrushes and some concrete paint and primed it. For primer this time, I followed the advice of an online handyman, and added 1 pint of water to my concrete paint.

Priming took several hours, and we took a few short breaks so it wouldn’t become too monotonous.

We also used brushes instead of rollers, since the brushes could be squished into the little holes and crevices to seal them.

After letting it dry overnight, I used a roller brush and rolled the 2nd coat on top of the primed layer. I added paint conditioner to the paint, which made it a wonderful smooth consistency and was easy to roll out quickly.

Then we let it cure for 3 days… and that was it!

It’s amazing how much fresher it looks! And the porch feels wider, yet homier. Some porch furniture should help complete it, but I haven’t made up my mind about what to put there yet.

Can you tell the difference it made?