Clanging Bell: A Little Dab Will Do Ya: Not When It Comes to Rustoleum's Restore

A little thing that my friends with money refer to as liquidity – I, along with most of the unwashed, call it cash flow – keeps me from tackling any really big projects around my house like remodeling my kitchen; but whenever I find myself with an extra hundred bucks or so crowding my checking account, I attend to some smaller home-repair need.

Since I've owned my South Carolina home – roughly seven years now – I've wanted to paint the floor of my front porch. I carried the materials required to screen it in with a Florida-like metal-framed screen with me in my Pod along with all my other belongings. My first home project once moved in was to screen in the porch.

I should have refinished the floor before I screened it in, but was under motivated then. After looking at the disgusting floor with its multi-colored peeling paint and other spots where the paint was gone completely for these many years, I've often thought about painting, but just couldn't muster the energy.

A week ago I began the ordeal.

I stumbled across some goop engineered by Rustoleum called “Restore.” It's specially designed for wood decks and concrete patios/porches. When applied, it actually creates a textured surface. Not satisfied with simply a coat of paint, I opted for the more expensive route of Restore.

Home Depot carries this stuff for $26 a gallon or you can purchase a two-gallon kit that also includes the special roller needed for application for $39. Two coats are required. On the kit box it says that the kit contains enough Restore to cover a 5 ft. by 10 ft. area. Of course my porch is 12 ft by 6.5 ft. Obviously the two gallons in the kit weren't sufficient.

Being the home-repair genius that I am, however, I decided that two gallons should be more than enough. But, I was...ummm...wrong. There I said it. I was WRONG.

What I didn't realize until I opened the first can is that this stuff has the consistency of pudding. The roller holds just enough of the liquid for one 3-foot pull. I was still in denial even after I had to open the second gallon to finish the first coat. I convinced myself that the second coat would require less Restore than the first did. But I was...um...wrong...again.

With about three square feet left to cover with the second coat, I was in my car and off to Home Depot for more goop. Because I am going to use it on my much smaller back porch, I went ahead and bought another 2-gallon kit rather than spend $26 on just a gallon. Yes, I spent more to save more.

Sadly the result of this was a different “expert” at Home Depot mixed the color of the second kit and it is a shade lighter than the Restore from the first two gallons. Now the area immediately in front of the front door is a shade lighter than the rest of the porch. It still looks pretty good, though.

The entire project, which entailed first scraping the loose paint before washing the surface then scrubbing it again with cleaner/degreaser, then scraping it again and vacuuming it in between all of these steps, required four days and a final cash outlay of about $120. It really only required about 10 hours of real work; the rest of the time was needed for the surface to dry.

Then I had to wait three days for the Restore to finish drying and setting before hauling the porch furniture down from my storage room and placing it on the porch.