DIY Porch Makeover

The front porch and back porch needed a makeover.  The porches were dirty and needed to be cleaned up.  The first thing I did was started on the back porch.  I pressure washed it but I could not get the old paint off.  I really wanted to stain it and give it a new look. I did not want to paint it because the house that I lived at previously, I had to paint the back porch every two years. It was a lot of work and it was expensive.   I thought about it and I did some research, and found the only way to take off the old paint was to sand it or to use paint remover.  I felt to myself,  that would be very time consuming.  So I just pressure washed it the best I could,  then I painted it.  I decided to paint the floor of the deck gray.    

Before picture

Here is the back porch in working progress.

Still painting !

Here is the back porch finished.

I am happy with the results, but I feel nothing beats the rich look of stained wood.

Here is a photo of the back porch with the finishing touches.

The next project was the front porch.  It pretty much looked the same as the back porch.  I pressure washed it and cleaned it.  The old paint did not come off when I pressure washed it.  I tried using paint remover and it did not work very well.  I did not want to paint it because I felt the front porch is an important feature of the house. The front porch is the first thing people see when they come to your house.  So, I started sanding the front porch.  I should have just went and rented a sander to do the front porch but I didn't.  I sanded the porch with a hand sander.  It took be almost a month to sand.  I could only sand for two hours a day at the most because I was on my hand and knees, and it was back breaking.  

Before picture

Here is the porch when I finished sanding it. The hard work was worth the results.

Next there was some pieces of wood on the porch that needed to be replaced.  After replacing the wood on the porch, I had to decided on what kind of stain I was going to use.  I picked out some stain and when I was staining the porch, the old wood that I stained did not match up with the new wood using the same stain.  I   sanded the stain back off and tried a lighter stain.  It did not match up either.  I did not know what I was going to do.  So I ended up just sanding off all boards that I stained. I then put a protective water sealer on the wood decking.

After picture 

I am pleased with how the porch turned out.  Please comment and tell me what you think of the porches.  

I hope you enjoyed my post.  Thank you for reading my post.  Have a bless holiday and Happy New Year! 

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