Some twenty years ago, I watched a Martha Stewart show where she painted her front porch. Oh, how I loved to her show back then when she was totally country. I have a sort of Southern Style home with a large front porch and big pillars and I was so in love with her front porch that I just had to copy it. This will be the third time that I had to get down on my hands and knees and paint this porch. This time it was harder to get down and up, but it was in desperate need of being repainted and I still had to have my checkered pattern.
What you have to do is first paint the entire porch one color with a good enamel paint. Then you need to wait until it is good and dry. Purchase a couple of rolls of blue painters tape and I taped it off. (The one picture I forgot to take) But I used my 12-inch quilting square and laid out my squares making sure that everything was pretty even. Then you paint the squares that you want to be painted. I did every other square. Then the next day carefully pull up your painter's tape, do not stand on your second color of paint yet and after you remove the tape let it dry again for several days.
There may be a few touch ups after that if the painter's tape pulled off any paint. It is a pretty long process. Unfortunately, it took me about 3 weeks to get this accomplished because we had so much rain. I had to leave my tape on for several days and this really created a mess and lots of touch-ups, but I finally got it finished and it looks great.
Here are a couple of pictures of it being painted.
