Now that the steps to the side door of my studio are finished, I will start working on the porch skirting again. I had started working on the porch skirting first, and when my original idea for it fell through, I turned my attention to the studio steps. (I wrote about the mistake I made when making the baseboards myself here.)
The main reason for this is that, as I’ve mentioned several times, I want to coordinate all the areas with steps that are visible from the front of the house. I don’t need that matchbut I want them to coordinate. So before I spent any more time on the porch baseboard, I wanted to see if my idea for the studio steps would actually work, and I wanted to make sure they looked the way I envisioned them.
The plan for the side steps worked, and now I know I will follow the same plan for the steps to the bedroom door so that these two areas actually fit together.
With the side steps complete and the plan for the bedroom steps in place, the goal now is to balance the porch with these other two areas. To do this, I use the same Porch & Patio paint to paint the wood on the porch. That’s the easy part. The tricky part is that I want the porch skirting to match the risers of the studio and bedroom steps.
I used retaining wall blocks for these risers. Obviously I can’t just stack retaining wall blocks to create the baseboard for the porch since the porch is actually a concrete porch with a wooden floating porch built on top. It looks like a complete mess at the moment, but here’s what I’m working with…
That’s where I left things behind when I stopped working on this project because my original idea (i.e. covering the base area with white PVC panels) didn’t work. I had already painted the base area of the porch black because I wanted the black to show through the 1/4″ or 1/2″ gaps between the PVC panels, and then when I realized my idea wasn’t going to work, I started removing the black paint with my hand sander. So at this point it’s a complete mess again.
But you see I don’t really have much to cover. I think the entire porch is about 21 feet wide, so the front area that needs to be covered is maybe 15 feet wide and 13 inches high in the front, and then it needs to be carried around the side at the same height, exactly at 5 feet wide.
And then I have this annoyingly small area on the other side of the stairs that also needs to be covered.
And I want it to look like the retaining wall blocks I used for the side steps that look like this. These are 4 inches high and just under 12 inches wide.
I quickly created a mockup of what I wanted it to look like, although I didn’t quite get the color right. But you can get an idea…
As I’ve been thinking about it, two ways to achieve this look come to mind. None of these will be easy, so I’m already preparing for the challenge. I just have to decide which path to take. The first option would be to use real retaining wall blocks, use my hand grinder to cut off the front portion of each block, and then glue these to the concrete to create the facade.
It’s basically the same concept as using pieces of reclaimed brick to cover a concrete sidewalk or porch, except that slices of reclaimed brick are commercially available, while these slices of retaining wall blocks are not commercially available, so I would have to create my own.
The second option would be to cover the base area with a mortar mix and then use a real retaining wall block to press into the wet mortar mix to create the desired texture and shape. I shared the idea of grout mix in a previous post and showed how this YouTuber, Michael Builds, used the grout mix to create three different looks.
So mine would probably be more like the thickness of the bottom stone, except I would create the size and shape of the retaining wall blocks instead of stones and then press the texture into the front of the wet mortar mix.
As I said, none of these options will be easy, so I’ll have to start with a few tries. I’m starting by seeing if I can even use my hand sander to cut even slices off the front of the retaining wall blocks. Working on the side steps got me pretty good at using the grinder, but I’m not sure my skills are that good yet. And once I’ve tried this idea, I’ll have to decide if I’m willing to cut the number I need to cover the entire base area. I haven’t figured out how many I need yet, but I already know it would be a messy and time-consuming job.
So those are the two ideas I have to achieve the look I want. But before I fully dive into it, I’d like to know if you have any other ideas for achieving this look that I haven’t thought of yet. I’m open to suggestions on how to achieve this look, but at this point I’m not really open to a completely different look. I want the retaining wall block look. Final answer. But I’m open to any other ideas on how to achieve this look if you can think of one that might be easier.
