Removing Rust from Concrete

A few years after moving into our house, we added a screened porch and stamped concrete patio to the back of our house.  The patio has been great and we've never had any regrets.  But one thing we did regret a little was putting what turned out to be rusty metal furniture on it because our patio was eventually covered in rust stains.  This coming Spring we're planning to have the patio re-sealed so suddenly I wanted to figure out some way to get rid of the rust stains.  I impulsively tried spraying some textured spray paint over the rust.  And while I thought that looked better than the rust stains, it definitely wasn't a great solution.  So then we tried some CLR.  That didn't work. Well, we eventually found a combo that worked GREAT. 

Bar Keeper's Friend and a wire grill brush

If you ever find yourself needing to remove rust from stamped concrete (or probably any concrete) go get yourself some Bar Keeper's Friend and a grill brush.  Check out the first block we tried it on. (I think it's fairly evident which block we cleaned up.)

Here's a before and after on another block.  See that big spot of rust there on that block on the left?

 

 Finally, here's a before and after on the whole patio. It's still a little powder-y from all the Bar Keeper's Friend but hopefully one good rain will take care of that.  It was time-consuming, I'm not going to lie.  But it definitely did the trick.  I'm even considering keeping the wire metal patio furniture (though I did spray all the legs with Rustoleum's Rust Reformer, first).

Refinished Table

On Monday Dwight and I refinished our kitchen table.  This is a table we bought with money that my grandparents gave to us, when we first bought our townhouse.  We bought it from a furniture store where they actually made the furniture.  In fact, we paid a deposit and THEN they made it.  So it's a great, solid, well-constructed table.  But it has certainly taken some abuse over the years.  The first major blow was after a night of playing games with Dwight's family.  We had played late into the night and then just went straight to bed, with plans to clean up in the morning.  Well, during the night our cats decided to play with the cups of water we left sitting on the table.  As it turns out, water on top of a score sheet, left sitting overnight, is not the best for a table.  And then I'm sure our attempt to clean it up afterward wasn't great for the table either.  Then throw four messy children at said table.  Not only are they messy eaters, they're messy painters, messy glue-ers, heck, they're even messy with their stickers.  So yeah, that table has had a rough decade (after a few easy years in the very beginning). But now it's back to it's original glory.  Yay!  It looks beautiful.  I wish we'd done it ages ago.