Powerwashing, Painting, and Plants on the Porch

Ok, so we had the new dining room door installed a couple months ago, which suddenly gave us easy access to this charming little porch that we had been completely cut off from for the past 2 years. So now, of course, we want to be out there all the time, so we needed to fix it up.

the newish door to the small porch (from January)

The small patio and its newish door

peeling paint on the porch floor

1. Pressure Washing
The porch floor was painted years ago (badly), and the paint was really flaking off, which is annoying for a place that I want to be barefoot, but really not ideal for a crawling baby who puts everything in his mouth. So we rented a pressure washer to remove the flakes. Having never rented one before, I had the impression that this thing would instantly and magically power all of the paint off - which turned out not to be true. Instead, it could remove the biggest flakes, then I followed up with my paint scraper tool, and then sprayed it down again. After an hour or so, I had removed all the loose stuff, but there was quite a bit of paint left behind.

after pressure washing - no loose paint but still ugly. 

2. Paint
Since the pressure washer didn't remove all the paint, what was left behind was safe but ugly. So I grabbed a gallon of cement/garage paint, which is presumably meant to be outside and therefore hopefully won't flake off like the old stuff. First, I did one thin layer with a paint brush, and came back an hour later with a thick roller. It made the floor all one nice homogeneous color, though clearly where the old paint was left behind it looks bumpy. I'm hoping this is "texture" that will reduce slipperiness.

after the first coat of paint - all one color but not very smooth

3. Plant Ladder
Clearly, the next step was to add some plants to this area. I wanted some height and wanted to cover up the awkward little notched area where the old walkway used to be - so decided to build a plant ladder using scrap wood. I just took two 2x4s, cut a 15 degree angle in the bottom and a 15 degree angle off of the top so that they would lean against the house, and then cut a bunch of scrap boards that were all 1" thick but various widths to 15" long to be the shelves. I stained them all and added a couple coats of polyurethane to protect them against the water. Then I screwed them to the 2x4s, 1 foot apart. I bought a bunch of terracotta pots of various sizes and some shadey, drapey plants. In hindsight - I should have spaced them out a bit more than a foot (or gotten shorter pots), because tall plants bump into the step above - but it's no biggie.

plant ladder!

So, the painted floor and lack of peeling paint chips are a huge improvement, and I'm pretty proud of my plant ladder and its flowing greenness. As is to be expected, now that one major eyesore has been fixed- suddenly a new one pops out. It is now super apparent that the handrails are flaking and desperately need to be painted. Also, even though we like our neighbors, a little privacy curtain would be nice to separate our space from their back door. Plus, it would be great to upgrade the furniture - so maybe some of these things will happen next. For now, this is already much nicer and safer than it was before, and has already gotten a lot of use.

yay porch.