A Little Faux-Tox for an Old Patio

So we've had the ability to resurface concrete and counter tops for several years and have done a few projects here and there. Last week we completed a patio project for a friend. The patio had previously been screened in and tiled. That had all been demolished and was ready for us to transform using a hybridized concrete product. This is how it turned out. Fabulous!

This is where the patio started.

Before

The patio was pressure washed and thoroughly cleaned to remove and loose tile glue. We had to delay starting because of buckets and buckets of rain. Once the patio had time to dry out we used duck tape to mask a border. Then we troweled on the first layer of bonding primer.

It is troweled on pretty thin. If you have really smooth concrete you can skip this step. This floats minor imperfections and gives us a smooth surface to work on.

This patio had enough roughness to it we needed to use two coats of primer. We let each coat dry overnight.

Second primer coat

Finally, the fun color part. We started with a light, neutral base color with complete coverage.

Finishing the first coat of color

The really crazy second color was eggplant. The exterior house color was a light gray and a dark gray with an eggplant front door. So that's where our color choices came from. The eggplant did not get full coverage.

The color layers dry rapidly, so we were able to layer them on in one day. We are are usually able to get our work done each day with minimal over site. On this particular job we had a supervisor named Ginny. With her over seeing everything we were able to be much more efficient. Meet Ginny. 

She perched on the back of the sofa each day, watching us through the sliding glass doors. She didn't have a lot to say, so I guess our work met her approval.

Our next layer was a dark gray. After the layer was finished, we felt there was too much eggplant still coming through, so we diluted the gray and added a second random coat.

Once the final layer dried overnight, we returned to seal it. The sealer obviously protects the surface, but also adds a luster to bring out the depth and beauty. Now the patio flows smoothly from the house to the deck.

You can also use this product on laminate counter tops. You can see an example of that here in this photo gallery. http://www.paintingthetown.us/cabinets_furniture.shtml