concrete staining nightmare
Live and learn and ask for help. Help! I have a 12 x 30 covered conrete deck that I am working on staining. My idea was to stain it with a semi transparent stain then tape it off and stain it with a darker color to create a grid pattern. It looked great... until I pulled up the tape. The tape pulled up the stain and now... ARRG. I etched the concrete before staining it... however I DID NOT prime it. I assumed (NEVER ASSUME)that to put down a semi transparent you would not prime it as you want it to soak into the concrete to show the variations in the concrete. Wrong. What I didn't know was that the concrete primer is clear. Hope that info helps someone out there from making the same mistakes.
With all that said, I am now in the process of correcting my mistake. I have used two gallons of stain stipper and pressure washed until my feet were waterlogged. It did not take the stain off. It did it spots, but I would say 75% of the stain did not come up. Here is my question...
The guy at the Home Depot said that since my plans are to now use a SOLID COLOR instead of a SEMI TRANSPARENT that he would not waste anymore money or time on strippers. Instead he suggested to re-etch over top of what reamains and them prime and paint. Is this an advisable solution. I still would like to tape and make a pattern over the solid color. Is this going to work out for me or am I setting myself up for more nightmares.
PLEASE HELP :-)