We came home from a weekend trip to my favorite wood stain upside down on our back porch and I wanted to cry twice. Once because I had so many ideas for that stain, second because I thought my porch would never be the same! Well, that is not so. It looks even better than it did before this debacle! Cleaning your concrete patio isn’t as hard as it may seem and is so important if you’re hoping to stain it in the future!
I received free product from Rustoleum to complete this project. All opinions and ideas are 100% my own!
The first step to staining your cement is prep. For this reason I have decided to break my post up into two because I really feel like the prep is just as important as the act of staining. If you don’t want to take the time to properly clean your cement, I would not suggest even going through the trouble of staining it!
Krud Kutter is a really cool cleaning solution for cleaning off driveways and cement. I always thought this was mostly for oil stains in your garage, which is a wonderful use, but I used it to clean off my paint and stains on my back porch!
What you need to clean your concrete patio
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I don’t have a pressure washer so I opted for the more manual way of cleaning my cement. You will start by diluting the solution with 10:1 water to solution. You will put this mixed solution in a spray bottle.
Next you will wash off your cement and get it wet.
Once the cement is wet, spray on the mixed solution onto your stain and let it sit for 3-5 minutes. Don’t let it dry on the stain! it probably won’t dry in 3-5 minutes unless it is way hot and dry where you live (like it is where I live!)
After you have waited the appropriate time, take your wire brush and scrub the stain. Some chunks of paint came off in a full piece and I didn’t even need the wire brush. The wood stain on the other hand, required a lot of scrubbing and reapply the solution multiple times. This picture was after my first try.
I did not get all of the stain off but I got pretty dang close. I think I spent about an hour on it and figured it would cover up ok.
Stay tuned to see how well the stain covered up this stain!