Way back in August 2013 I wrote “Ignore the peeling paint on the porch floor, that’s a project for another day…” at the end of a post about repainting my front door. That was indeed a project for another day… about a year later. So, fall 2014, I started scraping the paint off of my front porch floor. The porch itself is concrete, but had been painted (I think) red originally, and then gray after that. Both those layers of paint were peeling, though, because once a little concrete is exposed, water can get behind the paint, and then the whole thing peels.

I started by taking a paint scraper to it, and discovered very quickly that while I could get some large chunks of paint up, other bits were stuck very firmly and weren’t going anywhere.

Time for power tools! I tried my palm sander first, with some very rough sandpaper. That was… not effective, pretty much at all. Continue reading →