Advice for painting existing concrete patio and garage

[sseb86]

Hello all,

I need some advice for repainting the concrete patio and driveway in my unit (circa 1970's). The concrete patio(16m2) is at the rear of the house and is connected to the garage(21m2) by a door. I would like to have a good finish on the patio but don't mind cutting corners in the garage or even just leaving it red. The existing paint colour is a Dark Red in both areas and appears to be waterbased as the colour rubbed off onto a rag using methylated spirits. I want to paint both areas in a grey similar to woodland grey or lighter. The fence will be painted in Monument.

Patio Area:

I have pressure washed the old flakey paint off and found there has been multiple coats of red over the years and a final primer/sealer on the concrete. Unfortunately now I am left with an uneven finish if i was too paint over the top at this point. I tried poly paint stripper but quickly realised i would need to buy a lot more of the product to cover the area. I've attached a picture after pressure washing, you can see where i've tried paint stripper (its only bright red because its wet!). My next step will be to use a belt sander and sand back the existing paint (with a good P2 respirator) to and then prep and paint (any recommendations?)

Patio after pressure washing and a few patches of paint stripper

Garage Area:

I haven't started works in the garage yet but i do not want to have to sand back an even bigger area in an enclosed space. Its worth noting the paint isn't built up from multiple coats of paint. The existing paint has been removed by car tyres where the vehicle has been parked but this doesn't really concern me.

My questions are:

1. If i sand the patio area to concrete and then only pressure wash the garage area (to only remove the flaky bits), is there a paint that will do both areas? I was looking at Berger JetDry but read using an oil based paint over an existing water-based paint might not last (its also  expensive and has been slated in reviews)

2. Or will I need to buy separate paints for the bare concrete patio and painted garage area noting that the paint may not last long in the garage if it is a waterbased paint. If i did this option what paints would you recommend? 

3. Is there any other options i've missed?

This is a DIY project and I would like to keep costs and labor reasonably low. In writing this i've probably talked myself into leaving the garage as is and completing the patio, but if there is an easy option i have missed I would love to hear about it.

Regards

Sean

[sseb86]

Hi @Peggers. The distressed look came from a lot of pressure washing to see if that would remove the existing red paint. 

Thanks for your advice - I will go with White Knight Ultra Pave Quick Dry

[FrankC]

@sseb86, using a belt sander  would be a good idea to remove the top coat of paint, grade 140 , then feather the edges if you don't want to remove all that paint. One little tip, between the top coats, wrap your roller cover whilst on the roller, in a bread bag and tightly twist the ends and tuck them  around the arm of the roller.  When you come to use it again, you will find no difference in the roller whatsoever, it will still be soft and paint coatable (is that a word  haha). This is the finished job on my verandah( Couldn't take another photo, batteries in my camera died on me )The bricks are paint free. I found using  brown packing tape all along the brickwork from one end to the other end. This enabled me to avoid getting a paint brush drying line from painting the edge below the brick work, because I had  a brush ready and painted about a 2.5 metres without  worrying about the bricks then rolling  the paint then another 2.5  metres approx. then rolling again, until the end, and  presto, no brush line,  not like you get whe painting around a door of a room. let me know how you got on, please. Like Rob Pegley, I too am a British paint user, great stuff.

 

[sseb86]

Looks good @FrankC !

Hi All,
I've finally finished the patio area. I removed all the old thick paint with paint stripper and a wire brush and painted bare concrete. I'm very happy with the finish. It took some time to get here and i'll explain what I wanted to do VS what happened below.
From the above posts I wanted to use a belt sander to get back to bare concrete. Little did I know that I would never remove it all due to the concrete being quite course and not perfectly flat. After some research i found the White Knight Ultra Pave Quick Dry can be painted on existing paint. I also confirmed this with one the men behind the paint counter at Bunnings who recommended i just paint over the top if you are happy with some imperfections and if the existing paint is OK.
From this my new plan was to:
1. Sand back any imperfections with belt sander
2. Pressure wash to clean
3. Use Berger Active Clean
4. Paint as per instructions

Progress Pictures:

Above picture following sanding(it just sanded back the raised areas of the the concrete):

Above picture following Pressure washing the top section (lower section had only been sanded at this point)

Looking at the top section of concrete: Its easy to see that pressure washing pulled up more paint than i had wanted if i was going to paint over the top. This might have given the paint an uneven patchy look if I painted over it in this state. I am a glutton for punishment and 'doing it right the first time' so I ended up buying the paint stripper and went at it with a scraper and wire brush. This gave me the below after 2 days.

I used about 10Litres of Poly Paint stripper to do 16m2. (The instructions recommend 1Litre per 0.4m2) Sanding definitely helped the paint stripper do its thing so it wasn't all in vain.
After this i used Berger Active Clean and then painted the 2 coats (the above picture is just before cutting in/painting and looked no different)

 

(the red flakes is the old paint debris and will be in my garden bed for years to come. Its not dried into the paint)

 

Lessons Learnt for the patio area:
1. If the existing paint is ok I would just paint over it and forget about it. I wouldn't recommend what I did to anyone.
2. Using Paint stripper is terrible and I don't recommend it at all unless the area is small. It is also very messy.
If the area is larger I would look at mechanical means of grinding and just deal with the dust (Dust is the main reason i didn't hire a grinder).

I've decided to leave the garage as is given the above. Its just a garage and not worth the headache of removing all the paint and priming and painting again!
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion.
Sean

[FrankC]

Thanks, Sean, your very welcome.  That area has come up very well; is that colour 'Antique Silver', a Taubman colour for White Knight  Ultra pave. That is the colour showed in the photo of my verandah. Nice colour grey with a hint of blue, reminiscent of French grey. 

[MitchellMc]

Hi @sseb86,

That came up looking fantastic! It sounds like you've really done everything you can to prepare the surface, and I trust it will allow the paint to adhere well for many years to come. The trick now is to re-coat when you see wear and tear showing. Unfortunately, once it starts flaking and is then compromised, it is too late to re-coat.

Congratulations on a job done really well and many thanks for sharing your results.

Mitchell

[sseb86]

I went with Gibraltar Grey. Its grey in direct sun light and then blueish grey in the shade. I would have preferred a straight grey without the blue tinge but my wife seems to like it

[TedBear]

Smart move! It will be much easier to live with the floor being a tad bluer than you'd like and your wife happy, than to live with an unhappy wife making your life somewhat bluer than you'd like.