Painting Old Porch Floor

Heidi Kellner

Hi, I've got a small covered and screened in back porch off an old victorian home. The paint on the floor is thick but badly chipped up but also very sturdy. If I just painted over it the chipping would still be visible. How can I get a nice finished look on the porch? I can't imagine removing all the old paint will be easy, it doesn't budge with a good scrapper and to just paint over it - I can't imagine it would look very good.

Thanks

tylernt

Your local home improvement store should sell something call floor leveler. When we pulled up the old vinyl in our bathroom, it left uneven raised patches of dried glue everywhere. Rather than spend days scraping up the glue, we simply put down a quick coat of floor leveler which filled the low spots and made for a nice even surface. On a porch, a 3" putty knife would probably work well for spreading leveler into the paintless patches.

I don't know if floor leveler is something that will work for a painted wood porch, though. Hopefully someone else can reply with a yes or no. Wood grows and shrinks with temperature and humidity changes, so whatever product you use, it can't dry rock hard.

Gymschu

Heidi, I would test for lead before proceeding any further. Scraping and sanding old paint is going to emit lead dust into the air & cause a hazard for you and your family. If you test out as "lead free" we can offer some advice on how to prep the floor.

joecaption

If it's just a small stoop then just sand the old paint off with the roughest sand paper you can find with a random orbital sander.
Do not use a chemical stripper, it will effect how the paint sticks.

Heidi Kellner

Great advice. I'm assuming our local lowes/menards/home depot stores sell Lead Paint detectors. Which reminds me that I'm also going to be scraping very thick chips of paint from around the windows to prep for the painting. If I do have lead paint... well, lets cross that bridge later. Thanks

joecaption

Is this an old historicly correct home that you would not want to concider have those windows wrapped with coil stock so you would never have to paint again?

Heidi Kellner

It is an old victorian home (1886). The previous owners had all the windows in the first two floors replaced (old attic windows need done still). Great that they replaced the windows - sad to me that they chose white vinyl double hung windows - I don't think there is anything more unattractive than white vinyl, of course I would have chosen some Marvin windows that I wouldn't have been able to afford. In any case, the paint around the windows is just in the outside casing area - it's incredibly thick and extremely chippy - the worst I've ever seen. In my old bungalow I would have used the heat gun to remove it all, but I'm sure that's a bad idea anywhere near vinyl, so I have no idea how to go about dealing with the extreme chippy window boxes - same thing as the porch floor problem— paint that is really pretty solid/stuck/sturdy, but chipped and cracked and won't look good painted over. So far lots of scraping hasn't really had any effect on anything.

joecaption

They make a tool for stripping paint that's far faster then hand sanding for those jobs where's there's 50 layers of pant. It looks like a right angle grinder.
It will remove the paint almost as fast as you can move your arm.
Not cheap but it works as long as there's no nails sticking out.
I just use my random orbital sander with 40 or 60 grit paper that I buy on Amazon.com made by Mirka. (I think that's how it's spelled.)

chrisn

This advise is contingent on the lead issue which this poster chose to ignore

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chrisn

Makita, and still the lead issue needs to be delt with first

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housepaintingny

Sounds like your talking about a paint shaver, which will remove multi layers of paint fast. You set the depth, but need to be sure all nails are sunk below the surface. You can hook it up to a vacumne too, but still need to sand after using the paint shaver.
In response to your other post about using paint stripper. We use paint stripper off and on and have never had a problem with paint not adhering or failing in the areas that paint stripper have been used on. You do need to thoroughly clean the area after stripping and sometimes neutralize. We strip all decks and a lot of log cabins, log sided and shake sided homes with stripper and never have problems with new stain either.

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Evstarr

Chrisn, the op did say they will get a lead test kit at the home center. FYI.

petros151

if u have a victorian it's lead paint on the floor. If the paint is cracking into random size 'flakes' this is 100% certain lead paint. If the pieces are lifting around the edges and curled etc... 100% certain lead paint. You could absorb alot of lead from any dust caused by scraping and especially sanding or using any mechanical device to chip off or grind off the paint. You would not notice any effects of this until later, could be years later. Read up on lead poisoning. if you have kids forget it. Look at the EPA info on lead paint and how to remove.

The only safe way to do it is to strip it and this usually works well but is tedious. Many strippers out there to choose from.

Take it seriously for ur own safety and

dogris

joecaption had it right, Mirka is a sandpaper manufacturer.

Canarywood1

And a very good brand i might add.