front deck project
Good thing I took a four day holiday. I grossly underestimated the time and energy needed to restore the front deck of my house.
front deck as-is, before spraying, cleaning, hosing, spraying, brushing, spraying, and finally scrubbing on hands and knees! Covered in algae, moss and lichen.
*picture on blackberry -will try to upload
after the first set of spraying & brushing
deck boards after about 8 hours woman-power on hands and knees and some fine chemistry; you can see the wood grain which made me very hopeful to apply a sem-transparent stain instead of paint or latex
half-and-half. You can see that we wrapped the front of the house in plastic to prevent stain over-spray.
I wanted to get a "honey gold" stain in order to have the deck "match" the house which is beige with dark brown shutters. I was over-ruled not just by Alexa ("a deck should look like a deck"), but by the lady paint expert, and several innocent bystanders who were watching the drama play out in the stain section of home depot. I ended up going with "natural tone cedar."
The deck looks like a deck. You can see the different color of the three boards nearest the house as they were protected from 10 years of weathering unlike the others further from the eaves.
front deck as-is, before spraying, cleaning, hosing, spraying, brushing, spraying, and finally scrubbing on hands and knees! Covered in algae, moss and lichen.
*picture on blackberry -will try to upload
after the first set of spraying & brushing
deck boards after about 8 hours woman-power on hands and knees and some fine chemistry; you can see the wood grain which made me very hopeful to apply a sem-transparent stain instead of paint or latex
half-and-half. You can see that we wrapped the front of the house in plastic to prevent stain over-spray.
I wanted to get a "honey gold" stain in order to have the deck "match" the house which is beige with dark brown shutters. I was over-ruled not just by Alexa ("a deck should look like a deck"), but by the lady paint expert, and several innocent bystanders who were watching the drama play out in the stain section of home depot. I ended up going with "natural tone cedar."
The deck looks like a deck. You can see the different color of the three boards nearest the house as they were protected from 10 years of weathering unlike the others further from the eaves.