One of my jobs over the past couple of days has been to smarten up the pool room with a lick of white paint. The walls were just bare concrete, which made that corner of the garden look pretty dark and dingy so it needed the full works doing for a good-looking finish.
Here it is from start to finish:
I had to get permission from Mum to cut back her campanulas (the blue flowered plant on the side) so I could get down to paint the corner. Mum is very protective of her plants and it took two days before she relented. Then I swept back the leaves and made it tidy before bringing out the pressure washer.
Pressure washing gets off all the grime and yuk and creates a nice blank canvas to paint on. It was a scorching hot day so I left it for half an hour to thoroughly dry off afterwards. After half an hour I sprayed the concrete with an anti-algae mix that stops water from soaking through the paint and bubbling the paint off, and also prevented moss and what not from growing. Then it was time to start with the first coat (or primer).
As I was painting directly onto concrete I had to dilute the paint quite a bit so that the concrete soaked it up nicely and it sunk into all the little holes.
Nearly there!
Ta-da! The primer is on and it already looks fantastic. I planned to get up early the next day and finish it off with another coat.
The painting is now all finished! I was planning on putting a third coat on but I don’t think it needs it. Mum fancied brightening it up even more with some flowers as a finishing touch, so that’s just what we did! Here are the final before and after piccies:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
