Picture Perfect Path

I am fighting with the speed of our Internet service or really the lack thereof, which has caused a tad bit of discouragement on my behalf and as such has translated into a lack of blogging. So, I am going to try and push through it and get a few blogs posted in spite of the slow technology (insert ugh here!).

We are getting settled in, now I am not saying we don't have any boxes to go through, but slowly we are making progress. Along the way we are attempting to do a few (DIY) projects mainly consisting of the ones we feel we are even the most remotely qualified for and farming out the others to more experienced individuals when we are actually honest with ourselves that we lack any skill level in those areas to pull off a quality job.

So, with that said I am posting one of the first project we attempted. It centered on our front driveway, which had at one time a red stamped brick pattern. As you can see by the picture I have attached below, the days of that looking like anything had long since passed.

We thought how difficult could it be to restore this patch to it's original brick red color, well let me tell you. Bt had to give it a thorough power washing to remove the years of built up grime. Then we had to purchase an acid wash, which in essence etched the concrete and prepared it for the paint/stain. That had to dry for several days before we could apply the first coat of paint.

Check out Bt, he started with a roller and I followed closely behind with a brush. We quickly discovered it went much faster and we had better coverage when I filled in all the lines with the brush first. We had to apply (2) coats, which required 5-7 days of drying time between each application.

Once we had applied the final coat, we had to add the sealer, again we had to wait (14) days to ensure the paint was cured. Bt applied the clear coat, which did not go on as expected and actually ended up with a milky white appearance vs. the clear luster we were promised. I snapped photos, prior to the clear coat application.

We are still battling through the "final" look. In addition to the milky color in spots we are dealing with the dreaded tire marks. Seems the tree vendor decided to drive across it while it was curing and left a lovely set of tire marks, which stretch from side to side. We tried scrubbing them off, but it didn't work. Looks like we will have to etch it all over again and reapply. We are waiting for the fall before we tackle that project as it is just too hot to suffer through this project yet again in the Alabama heat!

Either way it looks 100% better than it did in the original state, so while I wouldn't give this project a (2) thumbs up, I would say we did a pretty decent job and I am sure the neighbors appreciate our efforts....judge for yourself!