Don’t Paint The Cement!

Oh.  Nice.  Who painted the branches?  Daddy was not happy about that.  Our big girl, Emma 11, thought that would be funny while she was helping Daddy paint the brick.  I think she got that practical joke streak from her dear daddy.

All right.  We are back to my usual theme of easy and low maintenance.  I think the older we get, the more important this becomes.  Hmmmm.  I’m not going to ponder that any longer.

What An Exciting Topic!

I want to talk about cement.  A thrilling subject, I know.  But it can be one of those minor little things that just becomes a  major irritation.  We gotta hold things like this at bay!

If you are about to paint your cement, maybe on a patio or outdoor wall of some sort, don’t do it! Hear me?  Don’t do it.  Unless, of course, you enjoy repainting it every year.  Or maybe you just like the chipped look after a little while.  In that case, go for it.  Hey, the chipped look has it’s place.  It really does.

But, if this doesn’t float your boat, then read on.  (float your boat;  is that kind of 70’s?)

Notice the red painted cement porch.

Ok, remember our first house?  See that front patio?  See the red paint on the patio.  It might look fine from here, but when you get up close, it does not.

Pretend I have a good close up picture of it right here with paint peeling and chipping and you can see lots of uneven layers from each years paint job.  A little green, a little red, a little plain….

Now, this picture below is of our current front porch.  The porch has never been painted and it never will be.  Thank you Lord!

This porch does have scoring to make it look like blocks, but truly, scoring or not, I feel the same way about cement.

The point of showing this porch to you though, is not the porch, but that little wall.  And particularly the top cement part of the wall above the brick.  It’s one of my husband’s spring projects.   I’m very grateful that I have a husband that likes to do projects around the house.  Yeah!

The whole area doesn’t look great yet.  And the fact that we scalped the heck out of the holly bushes in front, makes it really look naked.  But I think it will evolve into something pretty cool.

Saturday is “work day with Dad” around the house.  How about those paint chips in the dirt.  I wonder if that is a bad thing.  Later, Matt got most of them out with the vacuum cleaner!

Back to the wall.  As you can see above, the top was painted white, just like the brick.  And, like the other house,  it had about 15 layers of paint, peeling at different stages, in various places.

My BBAH (Secret husband name.  Sorry, can’t tell you what it is.) got energetic and decided to scrape the paint off.  “We’re taking it back to the original. ”  Okie dokie.

So they scraped.  Then they got the belt sander out and sanded.

And after that, we thought “Hey, it looks kind of white-washed and that is a cool thing.  Great.”  It has to be hip and cool, you know.

Yes, I think I like that.

So, now, all of the chipping layers of paint are scraped and sanded off and what is left is just the white paint that looks like it has soaked into the cement.  We are just going to let that weather and wear off over the years.

Maybe someday it will be back to plain cement matching the floor of the porch, but even with this white-wash look, it is definitely acceptable.  And what else?  Right.  Easy!  No more scraping and painting every year.

Not bad in my opinion.  And that’s all that counts, right?

Now as for the rest of the house – white painted brick – that is another story for another day.

So – The Nugget For Today

Don’t paint your cement.  If you think you are going to live there for awhile, suffer through a year or maybe two of scraping, sanding, etc and then sit back and think about more important things.  Or hey, if it doesn’t bother your wallet, hire someone to do it.

But if you have your house on the market to sell………..better get that paint out.

Bye for now and God Bless You!