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When we moved into our house two years ago, we had our work cut out for us. It was a beautiful home with large rooms and tall ceilings, but it was DARK. Off the living room is a very large screened porch that wasn’t helping the situation either. In fact, when we toured the house for the first time, we were so underwhelmed by the porch we sort of dismissed it as a non-feature. You see, it was covered in CARPET! Dark blue carpet, to be more precise. Not only was it making the porch look drab, it was also darkening our living room as well. Besides, who wants to vacuum their porch?!? Definitely not me. With kids and pets in and out all day, it was a nightmare to keep clean. Here’s the listing photo:
Time For A Change
I’m definitely a person who craves natural light, and this house needed some! It was time to make a drastic change. I convinced my husband that ripping up the carpet and painting the concrete floors would be a simple solution for the porch. Turns out, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Surprise surprise.
In a fit of temper after choking my vacuum for the 43,539,338 time out there, I decided to start pulling up the carpet. Quick and easy, right?
Not so much. I assumed it would be only glued around the edges, but boy was I wrong. The glue was slathered over every.square.inch of that 500 sq ft porch.
Here’s how thick the glue was:
I immediately began researching how to remove the glue, and found a product that was supposed to dissolve it so it could be scraped up. No such luck. It was time to try machinery.
My husband rented a diamond-tipped grinder to tackle this monster. Even with that, it took him hours to get all the glue up. Here’s how it looked as he worked:
Here’s how the floors looked once we removed as much of the glue as possible:
Better, but still pretty dark. This is where I went off plan a little bit.
Let’s Limewash!
With bare concrete on the floors, I was expecting the porch to be nice and bright, but it just wasn’t. I’d never been crazy about the brick color of the house, so decided to lighten it with limewash. My husband was glad he wasn’t involved at this point!
I knew limewashing would be messy, so I decided to tackle that before painting the concrete floors. It made an enormous difference! Not only was the porch brighter, but our living room was too!
Painted Concrete Floors
Once the limewashing was done, I could finally begin painting the floors. However, I didn’t want to just slap a coat of paint on them and call it good. I wanted them to be pretty, so why not create a checkerboard pattern?
I headed to the hardware store to grab my supplies. Valspar makes a paint that is specifically made for outdoor concrete floors, and I had it tinted in SW Whitetail and SW Neutral Ground. A 12×12 tile sample served as my pattern to trace the checkerboard.
The first step was to prime the concrete, using a Valspar primer. Once that was dry I painted the entire floor Whitetail. I could then begin tracing the checkerboard pattern. I found it was easiest to keep the pattern straight if I used a yardstick to continue the lines past the tile. Here’s how it looked with all the squares traced:
It was a surprisingly messy process, but the pencil smudges were simple enough to erase.
Creating A Checkerboard Pattern
Now that my pattern was drawn, I could begin adding the contrasting color! I taped the outside edge of every other square and filled it in with SW Neutral Ground. It was a pretty slow process, but the progress was fun to see.
The Result
After about a week of working on the floors, they were finally done! They are by no means perfect, but the result is a bright and beautiful outdoor room. The porch is finally an asset, not an eyesore!
Here’s a reminder of the before:
After a year of constant use, I’m happy to report that our painted concrete floors have held up beautifully. We’ve had a few chair scuffs, but they clean right up. Even dog nails don’t scratch them. I was concerned how slick the floors might be when they got wet, but they are surprising pretty ‘grippy.’ Of course, we aren’t running or jumping on them when they’re wet either.
All in all this is my favorite change we’ve made to our house. We now treat the porch as an extension of our living room and sit out there almost daily. Painting concrete floors really is one of the most impactful and cost effective things you can do to update a porch. Give it a try – it’s so worth the effort. Happy nesting!
Psst! Want to see the final porch reveal? Check out my post on how to decorate an outdoor space!
