Front Porch Revival

Our front porch was covered in carpet - yep - grey industrial carpet - and it was time to go! My mom and I removed all of the carpet in 40 min, but after the carpet was off, the fun began. Apparently they wanted the carpet to withstand hurricane force winds, so they  troweled on the glue so that every inch of concrete was covered in brown glue. 

BEFORE - Carpeted Porch

Off to Home Depot to get every tool that looked like it would remove rock hard glue from concrete. Orbital sander, chisel, hand held wire brush, wire brush that attaches to your drill....oh yes - we tried it all. Turns out it takes a bit of everything to get glue off of concrete. 

 Then the big question...what do we want to do with our porch? I did not want to paint it because I hate the look of chipping paint on a front porch so we thought about tiling it. Then we measured it...turns out our porch is an optical allusion with each step sitting at different heights - 6", 7", 8" - and every surface was sloping. Tiling - out. So more browsing all isles of Home Depot until we stumbled upon Rustoleum Restore. It is a synthetic concrete that goes on like paint, but it is the consistency of peanut butter, you can texture it to look like concrete, and they say it lasts for 15 years. Sold!

The night before we were going to paint I was out cleaning everything and realized that I completely forgot to fill in a large crack between one of the steps. So - back to my favorite store to get vinyl concrete patcher. Well - that delayed our project by a day, but luckily my mom was more then willing to help with the painting. 

BEFORE - with brown glue

AFTER

AFTER

BEFORE - Brown Glue Texture

AFTER - Texture like Concrete

I feel like we have a new porch - it is textured like concrete, not slick, supposed to last for 15 years, and it is NOT CARPET!!

Desk Chair Makeover

I love a craft project that transforms something you already have and costs less then $20. My mom and I purchased this chair around 15 years ago from a friend's garage sale and did the original makeover, but it has been well loved and was in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Desk Chair - BEFORE makeover

It is a really good think that I work next to Home Depot because I swear I forget something  and always end up there to pick up one last item. Originally I was not going to use primer, but after doing some Pinterest research, I opted to use it.

First I sanded the chair using my new orbital sander. Love love this tool - it is fast, easy to use, and collects the dust for easy clean-up. Then I used 200 grit sandpaper to smooth the surface, cleaned off the dust with a damp rag, and primed it. Rustoleum is my go-to spray paint, so that is what I used in satin grey for the primer and glossy blue for the finish. I held it about 10 inches from the chair and tried to apply thin coats. I let the primer dry for around 45 minutes and then applied 2 coats of my blue paint- waiting only a few minutes between coats. I would highly recommend rotating your piece throughout the painting process to ensure that you did not miss a spot. 

Orbital sander at the ready!

Sanded and Ready for Paint

My mom is the upholstery makeover queen, so she came over to help me with the seat cover. 

New craft room chair complete!