Summer Project Finally Done

Well, we finally stained our deck. We worked on a number of indoor projects when we first moved in, but now it’s time for more outdoor projects.

We pressure washed the deck to get the remaining bits of paint and to revitalize the wood surface. Using a belt sander, we smoothed down the surface. It took over 3 hours to sand it, and it was pretty tiring work. We also used a palm sander to get out the hard spots.

We then waited for the weather to be right as it has been raining or threatening rain for the past few days.

We saw our window today before the next storms and started staining. As we got going, we saw some very dark thunder clouds and heard thunder in the distance. We could see rain in the west. We even felt a rain drop or two, but we were blessed with good weather as it didn’t rain on the stain. We also saw a “snow flurry” of cotton come through the air. Some of them got stuck on the wet deck. The last bit of excitement was that we almost ran out of stain. Because the deck is old and hadn’t been taken care of, the boards have warped and there’s lots of space between each slat, so we had to stain down the sides of each board.

At the store, we were told that the stain would look really bright but would darken after a while. Well, it looked pretty orange when we first started applying the “Redwood” stain, but now it’s started to darken.

We’re glad to have that project out of the way.