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Painting the Concrete Porch
with Faux Marble Tile
© Stephie McCarthy
Our plain concrete porch has new life refinished in
green marble tile.
Jesse, our border collie, approves. No kidding … he kept
looking at us, tilting his head as if to say
"good job!"
He doesn't mind that the marble is a
fabulous fake. It looks very real, after all.
S U P P L I E S :
We marbleized with water based colors.
• Green Primer, Tropical Foliage, by Kilz (Walmart)
• Flat Black Primer, by Behr (HomeDepot)
• Chalk Paint in Plaster, by Waverly (Walmart)
and for depth, the final layer was:
• Concrete Stain, Emerald Pool, by Behr (HomeDepot)
west end of the stone porch
We chose the products for durability and diluted them to
soak into the concrete. A sealer goes on top.
north east corner
Here is the HomeDepot stain that we recommend for this
porch project:
Emerald Pool is the dye that goes over the primer to help
lock in the colors and create a transluscent effect.
This is the color that we used for the brick trim:
There is more information here about how to
create 'liquid brick' using this concrete dye and
Kilz primer here.
We used inexpensive nylon brushes that lost
bristles now and then but are tough enough to be
scrubbed into concrete for hours.
We absolutely love these brushes by Plaid because they are
both
inexpensive and durable!
This porch is about 300 square feet, and took about a
40 hours to clean and marbleize (the brick trim is next).
More about the cleaning process.
We made a video of the marbleizing technique
for HomeTalk here:
Click here to see the video on HomeTalk
Here's how the project began:
For a long-lasting finish, we cleaned
with muriatic acid. That's a tricky process.
Once again you can read about that, here.
Testing colors of concrete stain came next:
Now we're ready to draw a pattern
To make the 1/2" faux grout pattern, we drew the
design with ordinary sidewalk chalk using a
straight edge. We left these lines unpainted. The chalk
will wear away with time.
Some lines got erased
with a baby wipe and redrawn. The pattern
is ready when you can stand back and say,
"Yep! I like that!"
Chalking the design was fun, like a grown up version of
drawing hop-scotch.
We tried to think like a mason
and make a realistic "cuts" for the faux marble to
simulate a floor made with odd sized pieces
… we did no measuring!
Next, it was a matter of marbleizing for days and
days, with what eventually became a 5-step technique.
Steps for painting green marble:
1. Use stained water (1 cup of water with 1 tsp. green primer) to
soak the square, up to but not on, the grout lines. Be careful
that your water does not bleed into the grout lines.
(but, you can touch up goofs with grey paint later)
2. Begin blending in streaks of the green primer
over the wet areas.
3. Feather black primer in streaks and patches into
the wet green. Combine it with the green for additional
tones of green and gray. Leave some pure black as well.
4. Feather in the chalk white the same way … blending with
green and black for additional tones, and leaving a trace of
pure white here and there.
closeup of finished faux marble
For each tile we created a rough grain going mostly
in the same direction. We switched up the grain
whenever we moved on to a new tile.
We switched brushes every few minutes
so that they had a chance to dry a bit
which makes feathering and blending easier.
Now… for Step 5
5. Let the squares dry, then top coat with blue concrete dye.
You can add a touch of chalk white to create a slight
blue haze. This layer harmonized each "tile".
Now we have a transparent layer that adds realisim
and depth and penetrates the concrete for a
lasting finish.
By sitting on small stools we were able to work hours
without putting pressure on our knees or ankles.
This was the first section completed when we were still
practicing marbleizing the colors together.
This is an advanced painting technique, but also very
forgiving because you can fix your marbleing as you go
until each tile is a work of art you love!
By the time we reached the steps,
we'd really gotten the hang of this!
Now with a pro-grade sealer
this porch will be a dog-gone cool hang-out spot for
years to come.
Check out the video on HomeTalk here!
How to Paint Faux Bricks on Concrete
Transfering Art Patterns on Concrete
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