Home Improvements- Freshening Up Our Front Porch

Okay so I know the title isn't terribly creative. Put it down to my brain being in neutral because I'm fighting a cold.

Originally our front porch was covered in a bright green, fake grass carpet that for whatever reason used to be popular. If you're too young to remember it count yourself lucky, suffice it to say it came with the house and wasn't our choice. Years ago I pulled it all up, prepped the concrete and applied a granite finish which we were very happy with. It wore extremely well, and after about eight years started to develop a few cracks and a hole. It was time to refinish it.

Sandy suggested we get rid of the railing, which I agreed to since it was dated and wasn't serving any purpose (it wasn't required by code since our porch is very low to the ground). So, out came the cutting wheel... 

There were plenty of fireworks as the sparks showered everywhere...

No more railing...

I bored out some rotted wood that was in the bottom of all four holes with a drill and spade bit then cleaned them up. This would give the concrete that was to follow the best possible adhesion...

Supplies for mixing the powdered concrete. Limestone gravel is in the clear container, it has to be mixed in since the holes were so deep....

Here it is after two applications. Once this was dry I trowelled on some concrete with no limestone and levelled it off. I did this for all four holes...

When the concrete was dry I primed the repairs with a white surface primer...

It was time to resurface. I began trowelling on the granite finish, the same stuff I used years before. It's water-based and easy to work with, just a time-consuming fiddly job. Think of it as a very thick paint with sand in it...

I couldn't believe I ran short of the stuff! And being a holiday Monday the store was closed. So I had to put the rest of the job on hold until the following weekend. Okay. So if you went to somebody's house and saw their front porch like this in the photo below what would you think? There's probably some construction going on right? Yeah. We ordered take-out and Sandy specifically asked the person taking the order to request that the driver come to the back door. We even left the gate open and you CAN'T miss it when it's open. Our front doorbell rings and there he is, he had walked up the narrow foot-wide part of the porch on the left that isn't blocked by the flower planter. Awesome. Fortunately there was no damage or they would have heard about it. ..

And here we are. I still have to apply a sealer coat this weekend if the weather's good but this is it! In a few years we'll replace the porch with interlocking stone which I hope to do myself.

We've been busy around the property so I'll have more home improvement posts soon!