This post is sponsored by Wagner. All opinions are my own.
You might remember that one of the first things I painted when we moved into Magnolia Cottage last summer was the front porch floor–it needed it so badly and made such a huge difference. (read about that project here)
This year, it was time to give the floor of the side porch a new coat of paint. While I love the look of painted porch railings and floors as opposed to the bare wood of pressure-treated lumber, I have to admit that they are a lot more work. That’s especially true of our side porch, which is where we do the majority of our coming and going.
You can see from this close up of the steps that there were chips and dings all over:
The first step in the painting process is always surface preparation. After clearing off the porch, I used a natural cleaning solution and a brush to clean the dirt and pollen off the porch and steps, then let it dry for about 24 hours.
If you have significant peeling or chipping, you’ll want to sand or scrape the old paint away, but in this case it wasn’t really necessary. That saved a lot of time!
After using a roller last year to paint the front porch floor, this year I decided to use my Wagner FLEXiO 4300 paint sprayer instead.
A few months ago, I used the FLEXiO and its gravity-feed spray nozzle to paint our mailbox and post (see that project here). Since this is a larger project, this time I selected the iSpray nozzle.
If you’re interested, I used porch paint from Lowe’s tinted to Sherwin-Williams color Roycroft Pewter (the exact paint will be in my sources below). It’s held up well on the front porch over the past year and I love the color with white rails and spindles.
When you’re using a sprayer, even one with as little overspray as this one has, you’ll want to tape off the areas that you don’t want to be gray. I used a roll of lightweight painter’s craft paper and tape to cover the walls and railing.
The prep itself only took a few minutes, but it was the longest part of the process. The sprayer knocked out the small porch and the twelve steps up to it in under five minutes!
I simply worked backwards, spraying the porch and then working my way down the steps (kind of how you’d mop your way out of a room).
Because it’s already pretty humid here, we blocked off this entrance for 48 hours while the paint dried, but look how good it looks now:
For those of you keeping track, yes, we are still moving to Germany next month. However, I always like to leave a place looking better than when I found it, so I plan to finish strong when it comes to taking good care of our rental home.
Please let me know if you have any questions about the FLEXiO or sources (they’re linked below), and thanks for stopping by.
