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.

Time for bigger power tools! Home Depot rents out a smallish floor grinder – a bigger one would’ve been faster, but the porch had a railing and posts I was going to have to work around, so the smaller one seemed more manageable. So I rented the grinder and bought a stack of grinding disks.

This was significantly more effective, though exceedingly tedious – Also, when grinding concrete, it’s a good idea to wear goggles, long sleeves, and a respirator, so it was very sweaty work. Also, pro-tip, when kneeling on concrete, wear kneepads, even if it seems fine at the time – I managed to pinch a nerve in my knee, so the outside of my leg was numb for about a week after this project! Oops.

After about eight hours of grinding, though, I now have a bare concrete front porch, just waiting for me to… probably re-paint it, actually, since I’d like to to look nicer than the scuffed-up concrete currently does. BUT! First, I figured I’d repaint the posts and railing, so I didn’t have to worry about dripping on a freshly-painted floor. And that brings us to the next project.