Today we bring you the story behind our DIY front porch pergola! If you can remember, the exterior was beige, and among one of our first DIY projects was the extension of the front porch, complete with a white pergola. We recently painted our house exterior, in Alabaster by Sherwin Williams, against which the cute pergola fell flat. It was not a good look! After evaluating our options and agreeing we needed a pop of color using a warm stain, we were determined to give our old pergola a face lift.
The Plan
We first disassembled it piece by piece marking it with numbers so that way we would know where each piece goes. The process with the pergola was supposed to be easy. Strip the white paint off, stain it with a semi-transparent wood finish and reassemble.
The Reality
Oh, we were so wrong! First off, it was a pain to remove the paint! We tried various methods but it was very time consuming (and one thing Marido, my hubby, hates is time consuming processes).
The methods we tried were:
- Chemical paint stripping: After using the product we had to sand and still there were some spots where the paint would show.
- Sanding: We tried with different grits, but it would take FOREVER!
- Wood planing: But this would change the actual size of the wood pieces and ruin the blades.
- Glass rubbing? We even tried rubbing it with glass as per some random advice received.
Bottom line, we concluded whoever painted the pergola “did one hell of a job :D)”. At least that’s what Marido said as we were on day 4, still trying to get the paint off of the pergola.
Plan B
In the end, we decided to cut our losses and just buy new lumber and re-do our DIY front porch pergola since it was a relatively inexpensive project (following the same steps we did originally). To reduce waste, we will reuse the old pergola pieces to build some structure for our little one at some point. Finally, we had a solid plan.
As with deciding on any color choice, after multiple stain samples, we agreed on the Cinnamonwood semi-transparent stain for all the wood accents on the outside of our house. This included the front porch pergola, the railing on the porch area, and the house number sign.
So, maybe some of you are wondering, “well why didn’t they just stain it to begin with?” Well, for the past few years we’ve lived in this house, we’d been saving hard to outsource the paint job while reserving the white wash brick job for ourselves. All those years we thought we wanted a pretty, medium-dark blue exterior color with white accents (now are you seeing how the white pergola would’ve been an awesome choice?) Then sort of last minute, we realized what we truly wanted to see every time we would drive up our driveway. A white home, with black trim and warm wood accents! We will save the blue for decorative accents when we decorate the porch.
The End
As the saga of our front porch comes to an end, we think its safe to say we made the right choice with our DIY front porch pergola. Not many homes have this feature on the front portion, but if you have the space, and want to create a cozy little spot, go for it! You’ll only have to do it once (we think)!
If you liked and enjoyed this post share and comment below! Let us know what you think. Do you know any other method to remove paint? If so, on what project did you use it? We would love to hear about it!