Have you ever looked at those worn beat up, greyed out deck boards and thought to yourself “it is time for a new deck?” Well we’ve been past time for several years. About 8-9 years ago I made the mistake of covering the deck with an opaque deck stain. I went thru all the proper preparation. We power washed, then we did the deck wash with a stiff brush, and after rinsing and letting it fully dry, I then applied the stain. Mistake number 1 was using the opaque stain. Number 2 was using a light grey color. This was a mistake because it always looked dirty and was very hard to keep clean.
After the first summer the stain began to peal. Now I love all things old and scruffy but, this was just shabby and gross. The solution I thought would be to power wash again removing all the pealing paint. Wrong answer! This only made the pealing worse. It wouldn’t stay on and it wouldn’t come off. My solution was to throw a huge outdoor rug over the whole mess.
My first iteration of this was a Spicher vinyl floor cloth which I truly loved. Loving the graphic nature of this rug and all the whimsy it brought to the space. I didn’t have to worry about it getting wet because just a broom or a mop would clean it off after it rained. Unfortunately after trying to drag the couch over it by myself I put a tear in it. This was heartbreaking for me.
A couple of years ago I went over to Lowes and picked up an outdoor rug. This works until it rains and then you have a soggy gross wad of muck on your deck.
Yes they do dry quickly but if it’s fully saturated you have to get it up to get the air circulating underneath it. So this is where we were, when we first started our deck surround project a few weeks ago. It occurred to me that I didn’t want to be standing on a wet rug while running a huge miter saw! Probably not a good idea.
We went ahead and replaced the first 6 rows of boards on the deck. There was a couple of reasons for this. We wanted to make sure the undercarriage of the deck was still sound. We felt that it was but, after 35 years we needed to be sure, and there were a few boards that needed to be replaced. We have always been careful about monitoring the health of this deck, replacing deck boards when needed. About 5 years ago I noticed one of the deck boards was spongy. On further inspection we discovered carpenter ants. The husband quickly removed that board and we sprayed the entire deck like crazy. We have had no further problem with them.
In watching the husband remove the six rows of decking, we quickly realized that doing this to the entire deck was now beyond us. All of these boards were nailed down not screwed. This deck was built before drill bits for screws. Prying up 10 and 8′ boards was no picnic. After the first couple of rows we got smart and started cutting thru them with the circular saw allowing the husband to get better leverage.
Faced with the decision of living with the rest of the deck looking so shabby for even one more summer well, I just couldn’t do it. I had my orbital sander out already with 60 grit sandpaper, because I was using it to round over all the radius’ on the surround boards. You can read about that here. I thought to myself hmm, I wonder if this could work to remove the paint. How hard could it be!
I picked a board at random and started to have my way with it. Eureka it was working. It certainly looked much better and, the PAINT IS GONE!!! Let’s do another, and another, and another. OK so the husband was not pleased with me over this, at all. His philosophy? It’s a deck, it’s 35 years old, it’s outside, who is going to notice if it is not perfect. Undeterred after 50 years of marriage, I knew he would just roll his eyes, and stay out of my way.
After working on it for about 4 days I was only about 1/3 of the way and the temperatures were rising. Working for about 2.5 hours every morning and 2.5 hours every evening I was diligent and trying to stay ahead of the massive amounts of rain they were predicting. The deck was nice and dry at this point making it easier to sand. We went up to Home Depot and rented a floor sander. Now we would have to remove all 20 pieces of furniture off the deck into the grass. Again! The nice man at HD asked how big the deck was. I told him 360 s/f so he gave me 4 sheets of 60 grit sandpaper. I was a bit dubious because I thought surely there would be no way we could do this deck with 4 sheets but, I trusted him.
If you’ve never rented a floor sander, they are extremely heavy and hard to manipulate. Particularly on an uneven deck. We went thru the 4 sheets of sandpaper in 15 minutes and this proved to be a huge fail. We ended up returning the machine early and they refunded our money to which I was thankful.
But now I was faced with finishing this deck with my orbital sander. Armed with another package of 60 grit sandpaper I headed home with my tail between my legs. It took me 10 days working morning and evening. I’m not good on the floor anymore and double knee replacement has made it impossible for me to do any kneeling, so I sat in a chair bent over the sander until all 86 boards were finished. The most important tool in my wheel house besides the orbital sander, was my noise grounding ear muffs. I have lost a great deal of my hearing and have worn hearing aids for 25 years. Believe me when I say I protect my hearing!
Some of the boards had deep grooves from weather, others have some checking, and still others have some minor cracks. I was amazed at how power washing doesn’t necessarily clean the boards. We are talking deep down grunge. After each shift the husband would come out and blow all the saw dust off the deck and then, he would blow it off me as well. This is a dusty and dirty job. I haven’t stained the deck yet as we need some time away from this project. I’ve done a fair amount of research on the best stains etc and I have concerns because in reading reviews they all seem to have adhesion issues. I don’t ever want to go thru this again. It was hard work, but I’m so glad I did it.
Just because your deck boards are ugly doesn’t mean they have to end up in a landfill. So how much did this deck refresh cost? The surround came in at 956.00 for the 8 and 12 foot boards and the 2×2 boards for the strapping, and a 5 lbs box of 1 3/4″ screws. We needed another 5 lbs box of 2 1/2″ screws at about 35.00. I spent about another 40.00 on 60 grit sandpaper. So far we are into it for about 1000.00 if you should want to tackle a similar project. Of course we already had all the necessary power tools.
So that is what I have been up to so far this summer!
Until next time
Thanks for stopping
Shelley
