Tuesday, June 5, 2018

House Proud: We finally stained the patio!

Just a very quick update here ... we've been talking about jazzing up our old concrete patio for a few years now. I didn't want to use paint, but then discovered that there is such a thing as concrete stain that you apply on top of concrete. (I had always assumed that concrete stain was mixed into the wet concrete as it was poured...)

We have been enjoying our own back garden more and more, so decided that this was the year to figure out how to stain the patio. Spoiler alert: it was absurdly easy. 

First we identified the product we wanted to use, and the color. I wanted a rich terra cotta / red color, and found this on Amazon:


We also bought a cheap pump sprayer to apply it. Oh, and of course, we also ended up buying a pressure washer ... which, to be honest, we have already used for other things, like the day when Wil power washed a decade of collected dirt off the entire house...

We mixed the stain at the "thin" ratio: 1:8 rather than 1:4. We followed the direction to shake well, and then filter -- which I think may have filtered out some of the pigment because our first coat was very very thin.

We ended up applying the stain twice ... because somehow our bright sunny day turned to a downpour not long after we applied it, and it washed most of it away. To be clear, this wasn't the stain's fault! 

A second bottle procured, we went at it again -- this time mixing the stain to the more intense 1:4 mix, not filtering first, and just hoping for the best. And the result? Maybe more "ketchup" than "burnt Sienna", but I still really like it:


It's much more orangey in the sunshine (above) than on a cloudy day (below):


But it's fun and warm and has added a really nice pop of color in the garden. Next up: some new accent cushions and a fresh coat of paint on our adirondack chairs!

This was one of my #101in1001 projects, so I am really happy to have it done. That makes 11 out of 101 projects complete, with several more in progress.

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