Deck Reno Stage 1, Part 2

Friends, family, strangers: this latest project I'm about to share with you absolutely sucked. I officially did not enjoy it. The majority of it was done in 90+ degree heat and lovely Virginia humidity; I thought it would take a long weekend but instead it took 26 days; I thought I'd be able to happily and blissfully use a roller but only a paint brush would do the trick. It was unpleasant, it was not what I bargained for, but it has definitely been worth it. (And I can say that now, now that it's done.)

I shared Part 1 of our Stage 1 deck renovation about a month ago, showing the befores and afters of our built in flower boxes. Part 2, painting the deck, started at the same time but just took a whole lot longer. I explained last time that we have had strong negative feelings towards our deck since day 1, and were planning on replacing it next summer with Trex decking and a whole new layout, but after another glance at the prices we had to be honest with ourselves and put it off a couple more years. But we did think that painting the deck in the meantime would be the way to go, both to make it look a little bit prettier and to stretch its life a couple more years. When we saw Behr's Deck Over at Home Depot, we figured that was the obvious way to go. It's actually intended to make your wood look like Trex, filling in cracks and smoothing out the rough surfaces, so we thought it would be a nice trial run. We picked colors that matched what we were imagining for the actual deck renovation so we could see if we liked them, and got to work.

First, though, here are some before shots.

Because the wood has been exposed to the elements for who knows how long without any kind of stain or paint, there's a lot of chipping, chunks missing, cracks, and mold stains everywhere. Here's a shot of one of the worst hand rails.

One of my least favorite features of the deck is the weird and sudden slant in the floorboards halfway down the length of it. Our guess is that whoever built the deck just didn't measure very well and when one end of the deck met the other end they realized the floorboards didn't match up and they just did a little slant to make them meet up...and to make you trip every time. You really can't even see it if you're walking towards it, so it's a real killer. Just terrible design all around.

Despite being ugly, it's just not a very welcoming part of our house. The wood was too rough and splintery to walk across without shoes, you don't want to lean on or touch the hand railings, and the whole thing just feels dirty. Painting it seemed like the best way to give the whole space some new life and buy us some time.

The first step was to power wash the deck. Behr sells a cleaning product designed to be put down before the Deck Over, but it specifically said no to use it on unstained wood and since you can see that our deck is very much unstained so we decided to just power wash it instead.

My parents were generous enough to give us their old power washer when they purchased a new one this year, which I have to admit gave me some mixed feelings since on the one hand it was one less thing to have to buy for ourselves but on the other hand gave me flashback tremors of all the summers I had to power wash my parents' house, shed, and workshop. But in any case, it was extremely helpful.

It didn't really take all that long to clean the whole deck and railings; it was so long ago I can't remember for sure but if I had to guess I would say about three hours. If you've never power washed old wood and seen the difference it can make, it's pretty incredible. Here's a before, a during, and an after shot of that really bad hand railing I showed earlier.

What you have to be careful about with power washing wood, though, is that if you don't cover it with new stain or paint as soon as it dries, you're actually just opening the wood up to more mold and damage from the elements. Since we knew we'd immediately be painting, we weren't too concerned about that.

One other quick step we had to accomplish was to secure the railings a little bit more firmly. They were very wobbly, and you didn't necessarily feel too safe leaning up against them. We used some simple L brackets to secure them to the deck floorboards. They're very solid now, and even though the hubs was kind of bummed about how ugly this particular solution is, we planned on just painting over them and crossing our fingers that they would blend in somewhat. 

 
Once the prepping of the project was done, we waited for it to dry (almost no time at all in this crazy heat, let's be serious) and then started painting. We started with the railings; we used a different color on the floorboards and didn't want to have to worry about drips or mistakes while painting one color over another finished color. If we had drips or spills on this deck the way we did it, we just painted over it later with the floorboard color.

I had big dreams of using a small roller to paint all the spindles on the railings, since the spindles are gloriously square instead of cylindrical. After about twelve seconds of attempting to roll, though, we realized it just wasn't going on thick enough to fill any of the cracks and we'd have to brush it all. Such a bummer, guys. Those railings took forEVER, and when we rolled the floorboards several days later and discovered that that wasn't filling any cracks either it was an even bigger bummer.

Here's a shot of the difference between the first, rolled on coat and the second, brushed on coat (the rolled is on the left and the brushed is on the right).

You're able to just put it on so much thicker with the brush, and the cracks are actually filled instead of highlighted by the paint around them. It took forever, but it just made way too much of a difference to not take the time and do it right. 

All total, we did one thick brushed coat on the railings, one rolled coat on the floorboards and one thick brushed coat on the floorboards. Hence why it took so long. Are you aware of how much surface area a deck is made up of? So much more than you'd think. Behr does recommend two coats on everything, but it went on the railings so thick and covered so well we felt confident about our decision to save us some time and pain (and money) by just doing the one. The floorboards get the most wear and tear anyway, so that made more sense to do the two coats there.

Now that it's all done, here are some after shots.

You might have noticed that we chose to paint the tops of the hand railings in the same grey/blue color of the floorboards. We went back and forth over what color to paint them, but in the end decided to do the darker color because people's hands would potentially make the white dirty. We love the end result, and think it definitely has done its intended job of making the whole space more attractive while also giving the deck some protection for the next couple years. Now that we've done it, though, we've learned a couple things:

• The grey/blue color is not at all what we thought it would be. We like it, but we had been picturing much more of a darker grey/muddy brown color. When we get the Trex decking done we will pursue a color more like that. 
• The color of the floorboards, aside from being different than we'd pictured, is entirely too light for function. IE: it rained and the dogs walked through the yard and then walked across the deck in their slightly muddy feet and stained the deck. Like, permanently and actually stained it. Just like that. We scrubbed it with a microfiber rag, and the hubs even got the power washer back out and tried that, and those footprints are here to stay. And they're kind of everywhere. It's a little bit deflating...but it's also a temporary solution and we know that. I'm keeping it all in perspective. Because I suppose there are worse things in life than muddy footprints. But again: in the future we will definitely be pursuing a darker, muddier color that will hide their footprints. 

Overall, we're very excited with the end result. It's so much better than what was there, and it's been a great learning experience. All total, we ended up having to get 3 one-gallon cans of the white paint and 1 five-gallon can of the grey/blue paint, totally about $300. It's still a chunk of change, but much less than a whole new Trex deck so we see it as a good investment for the next couple years.

Now that that's done and crossed off the list, here's the updated to-do list for outside:

-trim all bushes and trees on back property line
-trim bushes in front yard
-dig out drainage ditch in front yard
-replace shed
-paint trim on back door
-repaint back door
-hose holder in front yard
-hose and hose holder by back door
-black barn trim pieces for garage door
-relandscape front beds
-tree in front yard
-rock beds with landscaping around back of house
-fix fence
-power wash fence
-repaint fence
-plant flowers in deck flower boxes
-fix up wood storage area on deck
-build new wood storage/barn
-organize new shed
-reorganize garage
-move storage unit from garage to shed
-clean deck wood
-repaint deck and railings
-lattice under decking
-build garbage can storage
-level off shed's ramp
-paint shed's ramp
-bury drainage pipe in front yard
-new shed for bikes?
-driveway redirect of driveway to bike shed?

Eventually:
-new deck
-lattice under decking?
-new furniture for deck
-build permanent fire pit
-roof over portion of new deck