Welcome to the Patio Floor how-to section of our patio makeover.
First let me show you the BEFORE and AFTER:
BEFORE
and
AFTER:
After my husband rebuilt the roof of the patio (see the OCTOBER section of this blog) we paused the backyard makeover project for some weeks and re-shingled our house roof -- well we hired someone to re-shingle our roof. I have to say I was not very excited about that project but it looks really great! Then it was time to go back to the patio work.
First let me show you the BEFORE and AFTER:
BEFORE
and
AFTER:
After my husband rebuilt the roof of the patio (see the OCTOBER section of this blog) we paused the backyard makeover project for some weeks and re-shingled our house roof -- well we hired someone to re-shingle our roof. I have to say I was not very excited about that project but it looks really great! Then it was time to go back to the patio work.
I have to give a shout out to Traci from "Beneath My Heart"
blog whose idea for the patio floor I completely copied. Like me she
wanted to lay pavers or tile, but didn't want to spend all the $
to do that, so she created a tile look using diamond shapes on the patio floor.
Traci actually stained her raw concrete. Her how-to is in the link
above. I would have loved to have stained it because that looks much more
like natural stone, but we have too many coats of red deck paint to easily
remove it. If you have an old painted patio floor, then I will show you how to get a great faux tile look.
First my husband extraordinaire removed all the black wrought iron
fencing around the patio and around our pool area too. It was quite a
job. He then prepped the patio floor for me. He scraped and hand
sanded the patio so I could prime it. I put on a thick coat of white
primer, then applied the "grout" color. I decided to go with
brown floor with tan-ish grout.
I bought the paint at Home Depot. I used Behr Porch and
Patio floor paint; Washed Khaki for the grout, and Pyramid for the main color.
Here is the "grout" color.
Next I lay down the stripe lines that will serve at the 'grout' lines when the tape is removed. Hubby helped me measure.
We started from the little corner just to the right of the left hand door, in this picture
below. I used a carpenters square ro help with the angle. It helps to start in a corner, and work out from there. The squares are 18 X 18 inches.
I used 1/2 inch 3M tape
for the lines. I had to order it online because it's very difficult to
find 1/2 tape as Traci writes in her blog, and regular painters tape is
too wide. I ran out of the 3M tape at the very end, and used
auto detailing tape from Pep Boys for the last part. It's much more expensive
but you can use it in a pinch.
Then I painted over this in the Pyramid color, waited for it to dry, and pulled up the tape! I was worried the brown was too light, but it turned out great.
I only had three small spots where the tape pulled up the paint. Not bad. I really love the look. Now for the fun part. Furnishing and lighting.