by Jessi Wohlwend
We finally got our back steps painted, and I just love how the backyard looks now! If you remember, we started Project Curb Appeal last year, and began working on updating the exterior of our house. We painted our front steps last fall before the weather got cold, but we didn’t have enough time to paint the back steps as well. This fall we finished our back steps mini makeover, and now they look great!
Back Steps Mini Makeover
PPG Industries generously offered to send me Sikkens ProLuxe’s Rubbol® solid stain for this project and the front steps, and we happily agreed! I decided to go with their Navajo Red stain to add some fun color to the house. Rubbol® Solid Stain is a hybrid alkyd/acrylic stain, and it has the advantages of both technologies. It has excellent penetration and adhesion over both bare and previously coated surfaces, which was awesome for us, because we were painting over previously painted steps instead of starting with brand new wood.
The paint on our back steps was pretty bad, so just like with repainting the front steps, we had to strip and sand down the steps before we started painting with the new stain.
You can see this post for more details on how we stripped the paint off the steps, but we used the same heat gun and the scraper tool that came with it for some of the paint removal, and used a paint stripper and paint scraper for the rest.
It was way easier to get rid of the paint this time around because the back steps were in much worse shape than the front; there was barely any paint left anyway!
Once the paint was removed, I used an exterior wood filler to fill in the really big dents, then used our random orbit sander with 80 grit paper to sand the wood down smooth.
Once the wood filler was dry and the steps were sanded smooth, it was finally time to start staining!
The Rubbol® solid stain is really easy to apply! This time, my mom was in town and helped me with the painting, and we got the first coat done (including the small upper deck, risers, and stringers) in just a few hours.
The color was already really gorgeous, but the next day when we applied the second coat, the red stood out even more! The stain did a great job at covering all of the discoloration on the steps, and it was thick enough that it even filled in some of the smaller cracks and splinters in the wood. But my favorite part about this stain is that even though it’s solid enough to hide any marks or discoloration, you can still see a little bit of the wood grain showing through!
The weather turned on us the next weekend and it got cold and rainy, but I know that this stain is going to help the steps stand up to the harsh winters we get here in Chicago. Plus, now the front and back steps match!
The next step in Project Curb Appeal is to cover the foundation wall with a gorgeous stone veneer. I’ll share that tutorial when we finish the project in the next month or so.
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Disclosure: I received compensation from PPG Industries in exchange for my participation in this campaign, and my honest discussion of their products. But the stain that they sent us is wonderful and I’m so thrilled with how our steps turned out, and as always, all opinions in this post are 100% my own. I would never write a post about something I didn’t think was useful or interesting for you guys, and Practically Functional will only publish sponsored posts for companies or products I love and believe in! 🙂
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