Painting our Farmers Porch

One of the questions I get asked quite a bit, whenever I share photos of our porch, is what type of finish we have on it. I’ve shared the process here on the blog before, and the original makeover was one of the first ever projects I posted about way back in 2011! We aren’t going that far back today, but since I gave our farmer porch a fresh coat of paint earlier this month, I wanted to share the process with you!

To start things off, the base of our porch is concrete. I’m not sure why, or how it came to be that way, it’s just how it was when we bought the house. Well, it was painted, and everything was a different color.

Here’s how it actually looked when we moved in ~

It didn’t take long before the paint they had used on the porch started to peel away, leaving the exposed concrete, and porch looking anything but inviting. So we decided to paint the porch and the columns black to match.

This porch leads to our main entry, so it gets a lot of foot traffic, and you can imagine the wear and tear that it takes. While the paint has held up, I’ve found that every couple years it needs a fresh coat of paint, so a few weeks ago that’s just what I did.

I’ve noticed that over time the paint seems to lighten with all the foot traffic. No matter how many times I hose it down, the dust from our driveway seems to not want to wash off, but a fresh coat of paint does the trick.

You can see the difference above. Closer to the door it’s a bit darker, after just one coat of paint, while what the porch looked like before is towards the bottom of the picture. I always tape off our siding, and use a 2″ paint brush to cut in around the sides, and then I roll the rest.

You may remember this paint from my post about painting our foundation. It’s actually what gave me the motivation to paint our foundation, knowing how well this paint works on concrete. It says you can use it on wood and concrete, and while I’ve never used it on wood, I do know how well it covers concrete.

I use the Advanced Deck Over in the smooth finish, and use the Slate color since it’s the closest to black they offer. This is a very thick paint, so it really sticks to the surface you are painting, so I always use a larger roller when using it.

It does say that you can use on uncovered porches as well. I honestly don’t think it matters if your porch is covered or not, I think what really depicts the longevity of the paint is how much foot traffic you have.

We get about two seasons out of it after I paint, and I really don’t mind giving it a fresh coat of paint every couple of years, because it just makes our porch look shiny, and brand new all over again.

Check out below, where I used this to paint our foundation! I just finished putting in some ornamental grasses and crushed stone yesterday, so I will be sharing the final reveal with you next week!

Stay Tuned!