2010 May | Beneath My Heart

Happy Holiday Weekend!

I hope you are enjoying some extra time with your friends and family.

I’m sure we won’t have as many people link up as usual for the party, but that is perfectly okay! We can still party anyway. :)

Have you been busy with lots of projects this month?

I’ve had several that have kept me busy, but the one I would declare my “best” is the one that took the most time.

It’s the DIY project that I just revealed on Friday. I stained my old gray concrete patio to look like tile. You can find the tutorial HERE.

Now I can’t wait to see what you have been doing!!!

Here is a reminder of the party rules:

Rules for the Party:

1. Pick the best DIY Project that you completed in the month of May to share at the party.

2. Only one entry per person.

3. Be sure your project is related to home decor or home improvement.

4. Link your project back to my party through text or my party button. (It’s common blog courtesy to the host.) :)

5. Promise to visit at least 3-5 other blogs and leave a comment. (I’ve noticed some of you doing this at the previous parties, and it blesses my heart!)

6. Have Fun!

I will leave the linky system open for a few days since it is a holiday weekend. :)

Here is my button if you need it:

Thanks for coming to my party and have a blessed day!
Traci

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Well, we finally finished staining our concrete patio to look like tile!

This was is what our concrete patio looked like before.

Dull and dirty.

It doesn’t look as bad in these pictures as it did in person, but believe me…it didn’t look good.

As I was trying to decorate the patio with furniture, I just couldn’t get pass how ugly the floor looked.

So I wanted to tile it, but we couldn’t afford it.

My friend, Richella, suggested that we stain the concrete to look like tile. This seemed like an option that we could afford, so we went for it.

Here are the main steps to staining concrete.

1. Clean the concrete.

2. Stain the concrete.

3. Seal the concrete.

Not bad, huh?

We used Quikrete products from Lowe’s for this project.

The pamphlet suggests to prep the concrete with Quikrete BondLok.

However, my hubby insisted that Muriatic Acid would do the same thing. It would clean the concrete and open up the pores for staining. Since we already had some of it, we used it instead.

WARNING: Muriatic Acid is extremely dangerous!!! You do not want to get this on your skin!

You want to be sure to wear protective goggles and gloves. You may even want to wear a mask to cover your mouth and nose so you don’t breathe in too many fumes. My hubby did not since we were outside. I also thought he should wear some pants since the acid can burn through your skin! But luckily, he didn’t get anything on him. :)

If you use Quikcrete BondLok to clean the concrete, just be sure to read the directions carefully.

Here’s my man…ready for the job…

He carefully poured the acid into a large bucket. Then applied it with a large stiff broom.

You can’t see it in the picture, but the acid would actually bubble up on the concrete as it was applied.

We let it dry overnight before we began to tape the concrete.

Now you can skip this step if you don’t want your concrete to look like tile. But since we were going for the “tile look”, we used 1/2 inch tape to make our design.

It is not easy to find 1/2 inch tape. They don’t have it at Lowe’s or Walmart. We had to go to CarQuest and KOI Motors to get our tape. It is used a lot in painting cars.

My husband measured and made our starting point in the corner by the steps…

We wanted our tiles to measure 18 x 18 inches.

My husband also suggested we make the tiles on a diagonal. I am so glad he did! It looks so much better on a diagonal!

We used a large piece of trim molding that we had left over from another project, a tape measure, and pencil to draw our lines every 18 inches.

I did most of the taping by myself while my husband was at work. Many of you ask how I get so many things done around the house with four boys.

Well, one thing I do is to keep them busy doing something else…like a “slip and slide”.

They played on that slide for 3 hours straight! And Mama got a lot of work done. :)

And then I filled up their bellies! They loved that the table was in the grass under the shade tree. (I loved that I was able to get more done on the patio!)

After I finished taping in one direction, I started in the other.

This step was not hard AT ALL! It just took a little time.

I would suggest knee pads though. I didn’t have any, and now I have blisters on both of my knees!

Oh well, it was worth it.

Now the concrete was ready to apply the stain.

Picking out the color of the stain was the most stressful part to me!

There is a color guide in the pamphlet which includes solid stains and translucent stains.

We liked the look of the translucent stains because they more closely resembled the look of tile.

However, they do tell you that each stain can look very different when applied to the concrete since each concrete surface is different.

We went with the color Vaquero Brown. You have to take the can of stain to the paint desk for them to mix the color for you.I was expecting it to look lighter on our concrete than in the picture, but I was wrong. It actually looked darker.

The pamphlet suggests to wet the concrete before applying the stain, but we did not. This may have made the stain a little lighter. Don’t really know.

We applied the stain with a roll brush.

Don’t cha love my hubbies black socks? Too cute.

We let it dry overnight, and we weren’t real happy with the results the next morning because you could see where all of the brush strokes were. Some were very dark and very noticeable.

So I got on my sore knees again, and applied a second coat of stain by hand with a rag to try and cover up the brush strokes.

We let that dry, and it definitely looked much better. Now with two coats of stain, it is definitely darker than what I had wanted, but I still think it looks so much better than our dull old gray concrete.

I peeled off the tape and here is what we have now…

It really looks like tile! Some of the stain bled through the sides of the tape, but it really just makes it look more like real tile to me.

The last step is to applied the sealer. We went with the High Gloss Wet Look Sealer.

It looks exactly like milk and leaves a white film on the concrete when you apply it with a roll brush.

But it dries to a clean shiny finish…

Can you see the difference in the picture above? The top half of the pictures has the sealer on it and the bottom half does not.

The sealer helps protect and seal the stain.

We have let that dry overnight. I was wanting to get a picture of the patio with our furniture back on there this morning, but I decided to wait a little longer. I want to make sure that it is completely dry and that the furniture does not mess up all of our hard work.

Overall, I am VERY pleased with how this turned out. It gives our patio a very finished look.

Here is the breakdown of the costs:

Muriatic Acid – free (we already had it)

Stain-$24.00

Sealer- $24.00

2 rollers – $6.00

Rubber gloves -$3.00

We already had the roll brush, the glasses, and bucket, so this whole project cost us less than $60.00!!!

Much better than the $300.00 it would have cost my husband to tile it himself! Plus, it was a lot easier!

On more time, the BEFORE…