Beware the peeling patio and celebrate the perfect present

Pinning for perfection

Halloween.

One of, if not my favorite, holidays mainly because I love dressing up.

I love the idea of being a completely crazy, different persona than I normally am (which really, I am pretty crazy in my normal life too). The idea of transformation is great when it comes to your home too. There’s so many options for home improvement on Pinterest from organizing art in an engaging way on your wall to actually renovating entire rooms, landscaping or even just building a whole new place from the ground up (She Sheds, anyone?).

When I started writing my column about Pinterest, so many people said, “Hey, you should try this,” or “I tried that, and it was a mess.”

I’ve heard some awesome Pinterest fail stories, but not many as bad (or funny) stories as the mess my friend Teresa Thibodeaux got herself into when she decided to upgrade the look of her back patio. In the age of DIY, we are empowered to believe we can be successful with any project, but the reality is much different. The concept was to take a boring, gray concrete patio and transform it into a shiny, bronze work of art. Teresa found a pin on Pinterest that showed how to stain concrete, and she thought it was a great idea and seemed pretty easy. “I thought it would take a couple of days with the process, but it was way more involved!” she said. “I washed the concrete and used a special foam cleaner they recommended before I put on the stain,” she said. “It said for the size of my patio I should only need two cans of stain, but I ended up needing eight.”

ConCrete Plan. Beware of what you read on Pinterest. Check your facts first.

The instructions called for a power washing of the area, then scrub with a special foam cleaner for concrete. The next day starts the staining, which you use a sprayer that is for spraying a yard for bugs – available at any big box home store. The problem that Teresa ran into was that part of her patio wouldn’t take the stain. “Part of the patio was poured at a different time and is rougher than the other section, and it just flat out wouldn’t take the stain. That’s why it took so many cans!” After the staining process (which took several hours and dollars more than expected), wait for the stain to dry and then apply a sealant to hold everything together. Even then, Teresa’s brother came over and asked, “Did you spill oil all over your patio?” The stain looked dark and as Teresa put it, “weird.” Obviously, not the look she was going for. “I kept thinking, what did I do? How can I fix it?” She found out her answer soon enough.

“Literally, within like two days, the stain started peeling. It looks like my patio got an awful sunburn and then picked at it!” She thought maybe she could just peel away the remainder of the stain project and just forget the whole thing ever happened, but that wasn’t in the cards.” The worst part is that now that we did the stain in the first place, the concrete isn’t gray where it peeled away, it’s a weird yellowish color, and it can’t stay like that. I have to spend at least $700 to get the stuff I put on removed and then redone by a professional, which I should have just done in the first place.” Sometimes Pinterest lets us down in really, really expensive ways.

On a happier note, I got some Pinsperation (inspiration from Pinterest) on a great gift for my sweet mother-in-law’s birthday. She is royally from Texas, and I saw a pin for a home address number that involved an old, small window.

I painted the frame of the antique looking window in the popular “antique look” painting technique using matte paint and a little sandpaper. I found a metal Texas star that was just the right size and with some help from my husband attached it to one corner. I used templates and painted “Byrd” on the bottom right of the frame in lieu of the address.

A great, quick, easy gift and great addition to her new patio that she loved! Plus, it didn’t cost $700 to fix. An easy transformation with little commitment – kind of like dressing up for Halloween.

Mandy Byrd is a stay-at-home mom originally from Colorado.

She is mother to Gracie and wife to her handsome devil-of-aman, Eric. Send Pinterest ideas and comments to Mandy at mandybyrd@icloud.com.