Change of Heart, Part I

Some of you gentle readers may be wondering why I haven't been updating my blog lately. Well, you're about to find out why--I've been trying to do the finish work on the house since the contractors finished about a week ago and it became more time consuming than I planned.

This next series of blogs is all about the changes that have been made to this house since I moved in three years ago. I haven't had a place to showcase these changes until now and I've also been working until now to make the house look nice. I hope that I'm about done and can enjoy my next few years living here with a minimum of projects.

So, I've spent the last week working on the porch floor. I promised several blog entries ago that I would be doing something about the disgusting, dirty, stained floor and I have. This is what I started with:

With all of the stains from unknown sources, I primed first with the Zinsser I had left from the laundry room. It's already looking better.

Then I started painting with "Cherry Cobbler," but it turned out a little more pink than I thought and also the wood was very spongy and soaking up the paint in varying amounts, so it looked blotchy when it dried.

Here's the second coat of Cherry Cobbler:

Yep, too pink. Partly the paint, partly the floor, partly the primer, but too pink.

Disaster struck as I finished the second coat of Cherry Cobbler. Out of nowhere, we had a storm and some of the porch isn't covered. So, much of my painting was ruined, but I knew I needed a darker paint and at least two more coats anyway to get the coverage I wanted. I went back to Home Depot for another gallon of paint and chose a slightly darker color called (this one's for you, Leah) "Red, Red Wine." This went much better and finally the color evened out--here it is after the fourth coat:

I let it dry overnight and here's the result:

This looks more pink in the photos than it actually is. It is really a deep red--not dark, but saturated and not hot pink.

I was finally able to put my porch furniture back on the porch--I repainted the iron furniture while the porch was being painted.

I've wanted to paint this porch since I moved in and ripped the astro turf off of it and now it is done. Four coats of paint. I will never have to do this again, I hope. The most important thing is that it eventually looked just as I had imagined it would. Definitely worth spending almost every night this week on it.