One of my latest projects

I've been absent a lot lately because I've been doing too much as usual.  It would have been nice to tackle one thing at a time, but timing is everything.  So the painters finished painting the house, but other than the outside framing, they didn't paint the porch.  They also didn't put up new screens.  So M and I put up new screens.  I will trim them out at the end of summer, it's just too hot and humid to be on a ladder doing manual labor.  That said, I did have a few days of decent weather, during which I sanded and painted the porch.  It didn't make sense to put all the furniture and do-dads back on, only to pull them back off to paint it.  

One of the issues I've had with the porch is keeping it clean of dust, pollen, and food (we eat out there quite a bit).  In particular, the rug we had under the table would catch everything in it's weave.  It was also impossible to slide chairs in and away from the table without snagging the rug.  It would be so much easier if there was just one surface and I could hose it down when needed.  So I decided to paint a rug on the porch.  Here are the steps:  

1.  Scrap and sand the floor to prep it for primer.

2.  Then I painted the whole floor white.  White is not a good color for a porch, you will see all the dirt, but any others color would be hot underfoot because we cut down the trees along the side of the house so now our porch gets lots of sun in morning and evening.  Also if you paint the floor, besides dirt, chairs will scrape the paint off.  I decided to polyurethane the floor when I was done to give it a hard finish that could be hosed off.  

3.  Next I had to measure and tape off the size rug that I wanted.  I had to decide whether the rug would be centered on the floor or centered with the screened wall.  I centered it on the floor.  

4.  I had to think about what would be painted white and what would be the yellowish green once I removed the tape.  

5.  Now for the paint.  I put on three coats.  The paint looks yellow in the sunlight and lime green at night.  

6.  Next I removed the tape and thought about what sort of pattern I wanted.  After much thought and research, I decided on the quickest route to completion, stencils.  

7.  I chose a simple border at each end and a larger center medallion.  The quickest way to find the center of a rectangle is string.

8.  I had to create the center medallion by combining three different stencils.

9.  I also painted a runner rug from the screen door to the front door with a smaller center medallion.

10.  Everything was going so well, just as planned . . . Yeah, that couldn't last.  I chose a clear polyurethane that was supposed to dry clear.

It didn't.  It looks like I dumped weak coffee water all over the floor.  The only way to fix that would be to sand the whole floor and start all over.  I don't have time for that.  M says it looks like I antiqued the floor and that it won't be so noticeable once all the furniture is on the porch.  Oh well, no time for regrets, have to move on to the next project.