Today I’m going to tell you
how relatively easy it is to completely transform your concrete front porch into a brick porch with a stencil and paint in 1 weekend.
Our front porch is huge…
…which is nice…and not so nice!
A huge front porch is great
if you have the means to decorate it with enough furniture for people to gather and visit. I still have plans for more furniture but the thing that bothered me the most about my huge front porch was the fact that it’s nothing but a slab of ugly concrete.
I once had a big rug on my front porch
but it got so filthy from all the dust here in the desert and was difficult to keep clean so I decided to just make a permanent rug, of sorts.
I’ve always been drawn to brick,
brick floors, brick roads, brick walls, (like this one here, and this one here) and let’s not forget about this brick pad I laid here. I just love brick so I decided to make my own brick porch! (No bricklayers were hired for the making of my brick front porch!) 🙂
The first thing I did
was give it a good cleaning…and by that I mean I hosed it off. No scrubbing, no concrete cleaner, none of that, just an inexpensive power sprayer and a long hose! Our builder was apparently running short on hose bibs when this house was built so the nearest one is a 50 ft hose away. Anyhow, once it was hosed off, and dry (I live in Phoenix, it doesn’t take long for concrete to dry here) I went to work.
The only supplies I used
were paint, a foam roller, and a stencil. I chose the Behr Masonry, Stucco & Brick Paint because a friend of mine had used it for her back patio and recommended it. I loved it!
I ordered the stencil online
from www.cuttingedgestencils.com. I looked at other herringbone pattern stencils but I chose this one because it covered the most area, which to me means a bit less work. The first place I laid the stencil was straight out from the front door in the center of the walkway as you enter my front porch. I suppose it doesn’t really matter but I thought that way I would be sure to walk out and see a full pattern, now that I type the words I’m not sure what I was thinking. But I’m going to stand by it. 🙂
Using my foam roller
I rolled it into the paint and then rolled as much off of it as I could on the bumpy part of the paint tray. I’ve learned the hard way that too much paint on a roller causes bleeding under the stencil. It’s better to do light coats. Once I got started it really went pretty fast. It was a very warm day (most days are, it’s Phoenix!) and the paint was dry enough to just pick up the stencil, line it up with the guidelines, and start on the next section.
The above photo shows what I had done in only about 15 minutes, I focused only on areas where I could get a full stencil pattern in without worrying about bumping into walls!
We’re probably at about 45 minutes here,
once you factor in my age you realize that things start off great but then begin to slow down. But I kept going. I didn’t worry about the joints in the concrete I just painted over them. (my joints were a different story) If you follow me over on Instagram @somethingpaintedwhite you know that I’m not a perfectionist. I try not to sweat the small stuff. Work smarter, not harder is my policy! 🙂
Let me add here
that I bought a pair of $10 knee pads and they were a LIFE SAVER….and a knee saver! Wow! I will never work without knee pads again. Who knew??!?
The rest of the story
is really just a matter of lather, rinse, repeat! I think I spent a total of 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon working on this brick porch. That included the time I spent hosing off the porch too!
The next day I got back at it
and it was a bit more work as I now had to do all the edges. In some cases, you can sort of roll the stencil up the wall and then try to hold it down flat against the floor with one hand, while you roll the paint on with the other hand. That was not THIS case!
I was struggling to get the bricks as close to the walls as I wanted by doing that so it was time to pull out the scissors and...CUT THE STENCIL!!! (gasp) I know!!! You lay down $40 bucks for something, it just doesn’t seem right to chop it up. But I finally convinced myself that this stencil would be a beast to clean, I only bought it for this project, and it’s still cheaper than a bricklayer! Besides, I needed to work smarter not harder. Snip, snip, snip!!!
I was careful to cut as little as necessary to get the brick pattern as close to the wall as I could. As I worked my way around the porch and had railings and pillars to contend with, there was more snipping. My stencil was in pieces by the time I was done but that’s ok…I now have a gorgeous brick porch so it was totally worth it. All in all, it took me about 8 hours and I’d do it all over again because it’s so amazing!
I cannot even get over the difference.
I love it so much! People walking by with their kids and dogs stopped to comment on it and everyone approved! Yay!
Remember that Behr-
Masonry, Stucco and Brick paint that I used? No sealer required! WOOT!!! That’s my kind of paint!
I’ll admit, I’ve noticed
a few shoe marks here and there from my shoes, his shoes, the UPS man’s shoes….no big deal, they clean right off…and, may I remind you…don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s a porch! 🙂
I am absolutely
in love with my NEW BRICK PORCH and if you’ve been considering it I highly recommend you just jump in and do it. You will be so glad you did!!!!
Happy Painting,
~Cindy~
….wife, mom, Mimi (aka grandma) and home décor enthusiast.
I’m do glad I found you!! I absolutely love what you did with the porch. I’m also from Phoenix so it was a joy reading your blog
im also a Mimi. Small World
Cheryl
Thank you so much for being here! I’m so glad you enjoyed it and I hope to get more posts up soon. Enjoy the rain in Phoenix today…it really does my heart good! 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing Cindy. I will surely be attempting this too 🙂