This week has been quite a ride. And the only thing I did on my porch for One Room Challenge was to pressure wash the floors on the patio. So today I'll share what I've learned and my pressure washing tips.
If you are new here, my name is April and I'm doing a makeover of my screened-in-porch. If you are not familiar with One Room Challenge yet, you can catch up on all the posts here.
Week 1. The before photos and design plans.
Week 2. Demo and installing siding panels.
Week 3. Adding trim to the walls and challenges.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I haven't done much this week. It's been raining a lot and I had other projects that required my immediate attention. But the good news is that I still managed to do something for the screened-in-porch makeover. And as I always say, small progress is better than none!
So here we are! I used a power washer for the first time and would love to share with you my experience and tips!
Everyone with who I discussed how amazing and satisfying the pressure washer is told me the same story - you are going to love it! I already thought that this match was made in heaven and couldn't wait to get my hands on one to try it out! Thanks to my awesome neighbor, I was able to land one. He has this model and it worked great! But it wasn't as mind-blowing to sweep me off my feet. Perhaps, I did something wrong but I was more annoyed than happy about this whole process!
Pressure washing tips
Perhaps I did something wrong and my love for this amazing tool will come in time, but here are a few tips that I've learned about pressure washing tips.
The first important tip is to wear the correct clothes for such an event - closed toes shoes! I went a bit further in this logical step and wore my rain boots. I've heard terrifying stories of people getting their toes cut while wearing open shoes. I could totally see it happening.
Also, make sure that the clothes that you are wearing are something that you don't mind getting dirty. Hahaha this is definitely a dirty job.
As a part of necessary items, I'll also recommend wearing ear protection. A pressure washer is so loud, you don't want to become deaf.
There are a few nozzles on the pressure washer. I'm not going to discuss in detail how to use your model. I'm sure there are enough YouTube tutorials for that. But I wanted to mention that different nozzles have different pressure and used for different things. I was able to pull out this graph that explains it in more detail.
My first mistake was to use the wrong nozzle. I started with a 25* nozzle and quickly realized that it wasn't going to take off the paint splatters that we had all over our concrete. So what I discovered is the smaller the angle, the more intense it gets! haha Maybe it sounds obvious to you, but to me, it was a discovery!
My biggest problem with pressure washing a closed space is that the water isn't going anywhere. Unlike when you pressure wash the wall, it's obvious, water runs down, stays in the ditch. With closed space, there is no escape. So you end up stuck with the lake of dirty water that splashes everywhere.
At that moment I caught my first mistake. Before pressure washing, make sure that you don't have any dust or any debris on the floors!!! I clearly made this mistake and it added to the mess on the walls. So make sure to wash your floors very well before using a pressure washer.
In a timely fashion, after I finished it, I googled what I could use instead and found this cool gadget that seems could solve my problem!!! It's called a pressure washer water broom and it could be attached to the pressure washer (here is a link to get it from Amazon). In this case, water would flow further instead of being trapped on the sides. And you could get all water out and keep your walls clean.
It also turned out that it takes way longer to get rid of dirt and it is a very tedious job. Eventually, I finished pressure washing the concrete floors on the porch but it didn't bring me as much joy as I expected. I had to wash my beautiful new walls by hand to get rid of small pieces so I could paint them next week!
So here is a list of things that I still need to do for this room makeover.
Clear the space
Demo the walls
Put side paneling
Add trim
Pressure wash the floors
Paint screened-in porch
Change screens
Add a new door
Install new fan light
Source credenza from Facebook marketplace
Build outdoor chairs
Make tile coffee table
Get accessories
Decorate the space
Add lights
Add plants
It will be challenging to get anything done next week since it supposes to rain for 7 days. But I'll try to figure out the furniture situation. It seems that I'll have to build chairs myself since I didn't find anything decent in the thrift stores. But the console that I planned to put by the wall will have to be outsourced. The wood is so expensive these days and I don't necessarily need something custom built for this space. Instead, I'll just tweak my mood board and go for a bit different vibe.
This is it for this week, stay tuned to see my progress with this screened-in-porch, and don't forget to follow me on Instagram, where I post daily updates. You can also sign up for email updates so that you don't miss any of the action!
xoxo,
April
