So, we were unable to get the old paint off the concrete. And let me say, we all hated the old paint. It is kind of a gray-blueish white, and once cleaned, the stairs and walkway looked ghastly against the green house and red brick pathway (demonstrating that cleanliness is not always a good thing). Faced with the choice of choosing a paint (a choice involving going out again to Home Depot, and then having to decide on a color -- I don't know which part of the task is more dreaded), or just trying out the stain, because we already have a gallon: we stained.
Not much to say -- the pictures say it all. The stain -- which admittedly I just slapped on -- is streaky, blotchy and too transparent. It just looks dirty, and not even as nice as the nice balanced layer of dirt that had been there before we cleaned.Actually the front looks kind of nice if you stand across the street, maybe because the tree blocks much of the view. However, we haven't a force field to install to keep all viewers of the house at least 45 feet away. Tomorrow we paint. The question is now, Green or Brick Brown?
3 comments:
I've seen the staining done to look intentionally mottled. Are you sure that another coat of stain won't give it that lovely aged mottled effect? The time I saw it done, it was applied with a hand-pumped sprayer -- the kind Dad used to use for spraying chemicals on the garden. Only plastic.
Oh, and P.S. you can have deck paint custom colored to any color you want -- even the color of the stain.
Urrhm, the instructions on the can recommend spraying on the stain. But we didn't have the spray tool and we just wanted the entire task finished (where "task" means, the front porch and garden area completed for the winter, and this is one small part of that). Our bad.
It is interesting to hear that we might be able to use an inexpensive pesticide sprayer, but I believe the overall opinion is that we don't like the color, either. So probably we will go with the paint solution.
Re: color. The Behr line at Home Depot offers 40 colors (and another 30 or so in lighter, more pussy colors that are completely out of consideration, even tho' this is the House of Cats). So having something to choose from is not a problem.
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