Wednesday, July 8, 2015

deck project

For anyone thinking mom and I were just sitting around drinking Mojitos while Dad and Doug worked on the bathroom, you are (sadly) mistaken.
We have a deck on both the front and back doors, and while I didn't think they looked too bad, they did have deep cracks and some rotting boards. So we decided to paint the deck.
Not as easy as it sounds. We have two huge maple trees near our house so over the spring, thousands (not exaggerating!) of those helicopter things came down and were in huge piles in my flower beds, lawn, and in every single crack in the deck. On at least 2 of my off work days mom came over and we crawled around on the deck with putty knives (2 out of 3 broke), a straight saw (broke), and screwdrivers and we had to poke all the things thru the cracks to the ground. It was very time consuming as the cracks were so tight, and then there was other crap in the cracks. We popped out 11 screws from the front deck, and probably 40+ pea gravel rocks from the back deck.
The next step Dad came over and with his saw (which ended up burning out and destroyed) he widened the cracks so that rain and debris can fall thru more easily in the future. He and Doug also replaced some of the worst rotten boards.
Dad, probably taking a picking-out-a-splinter break
rented a sander, our hand-held one was no match for the deck
The next step was cleaning the deck. I scrubbed it down with a deck cleaner (and wore a bristle brush down to a nub), washed it off, and then had to wait 2 days for it to dry completely
Ready to paint at last! (I actually like the look of the wood there. I think we went with paint to fill in the cracks whereas just staining it wouldn't really protect the wood where it was weak)
The directions say just to use a brush to get in between the cracks and then go over the tops of the boards with a roller, but mom thought since the cracks were so deep that it would be better to hand brush the whole thing and make sure huge amounts of paint were in the cracks. We had bought a Rescue-It paint that has cement or something in it and it is designed to fill up the cracks.
No pictures of the back deck apparently. Anyway, Doug thinks it turned out a little lighter than he had hoped, but I think it looks pretty good. So it needs another coat, the paint says you MUST do 2 coats or it can peel up, but now the problem is that its been a rainy week again. It has to be dry 24 hours before and 24 hours after and it just hasn't. I hope it will be ok till we get back from our vacation and can get to it! One other thing I noticed this morning is that some leaves had fallen and it had rained and there was some 'leaf stains' on the deck. I really hope that won't be an issue!!
So yeah, we are more than half done. When it is dry again I'll need to glob up more paint in the deep cracks still, and then hopefully can just roll on one final coat. We are also looking to buy some of that lattice stuff to block off underneath the decks. So have to buy that and then paint it and nail it up. One thing's for sure, this home updating stuff sure ain't cheap! We probably spent $350 on paint (and might still need more), wood, sander, deck cleaner, and it's been hours and hours of work. But as mom reminds me, you have to take care of your property and it also adds to house value. Ok, ok, you're right mom!

3 comments:

  1. Wow it looks so good! And gosh it seems like SO much work. I'm dreading having to stain our deck this fall, UGH!

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  2. Looks good so far :). Man, maybe someone should take some notes from this deck, it's unstoppable!! "Bought this tool....it broke.....then got this one, it broke....this broke....and,broke". Deck 6, tools 0

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    Replies
    1. Our deck was secretly built by Chuck Noris ;)

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