DIY: Concrete Stain Faux Paver Patio
When we first began house hunting, the top thing on my list was a covered front porch. When we found our home, however, the lack of front porch was completely overlooked for the amazing views we got from our back patio. The only setback was the plain boring concrete slab.
| Supplies |
|---|
| Concrete Dye (We used Behr Industrial Grey & Arctic Black) and Sealer |
| Sprayer(s) |
| 1/2” Painters Tape (LOTS of it) |
| Powerwasher or Deck Brush (with lots of elbow grease!) |
| Paint Roller |
(We had a few false starts with this project trying to plan around the weather. You’ll need a couple of dry days with no chance of rain so plan accordingly!)
• You want your concrete to be super clean before you lay down your tape. We power washed and scrubbed the patio slab to get rid of all the dirt, debris and loose stones. This step ended up taking almost a whole day, which was a lot longer than I thought it would!
• Plan out how you want your “Grout” lines to look. On our patio, I tried to incorporate the existing seams in the concrete. I also knew I wanted it to look a little like flagstone with various sizes of “stones.” So, I mapped out straight grid lines and then went back in and created smaller pieces within the big squares. We ended up using 10 rolls of 1/2″ painters tape to map out the design.
• After I had the tape down (another step that took a LOT longer than I thought it would), it was time to start staining – Yay! I purchased 2 Gallons of Behr Concrete Dye from Home Depot in “Industrial Grey” and two quarts of “Arctic Black.”
• To apply the stain, you’ll need a few cheap pump sprayers that you’ll feel comfortable tossing away. I sprayed a base layer of the “Industrial Grey”, let it dry for about an hour, then went back over and made some areas of concrete a little darker than others.
• After letting the base color dry for a few hours, I used a second pump sprayer to apply the “Arctic Black” dye. I very lightly misted this color over the entire patio, and then went back and applied it more heavily in various patches to create different colored “stones.”
• The hardest part of the whole project was to wait for the Dye to dry. I gave it about 2 hours in the sun before I started to pull up the tape and was BLOWN AWAY with the results! Also, it was crazy satisfying to pull up the miles and miles of painters tape I’d spent all day laying down.
• Before I went back over the patio with a sealer, I let the color set and age for about a week. I knew I wanted to soften the “hard” tape lines a little before I locked it in, but, you could certainly seal the concrete sooner. We, again, used a clean sprayer, but this time, one of us sprayed while the other took a roller brush to even out the coverage. And there you have it! One weekend and about $75 dollars later, our cracked and boring concrete slab looks like a custom flagstone patio! We’re still hopeful that some day we’ll be able to tear out the slab and re-work the patio area, but for now, this is a vast improvement to what we had.
