Home Projects

Treating the Decks, September 2007

When we first moved into the house, it was obvious that the decks needed some work. Last Fall, we cut down all the over grown cedars that created a wall around the front of the house. For this year's Fall project, we power washed the decks and stained them. They really came out great.

A couple weekends before staining, we borrowed a pressure washer from Scott's parents.

It made really short work of cleaning off the scum from the decks.

Turns out, pressure washing is almost as addictive as chain sawing.

Just look at the difference between before and after.

The pressure washer really fatigued your arms and hands, so we took turns operating it.

In about 2 hours we had both upstairs and downstairs decks done.

After giving the decks a couple weeks to dry out, we picked a natural tone cedar stain to treat them with.

As bad as the decks looked originally, we were amazed at how well they came back. After a little stain, they looked almost new.

Again, here is a before and after shot.

Sue catches me taking a little break. It took me a solid weekend to stain the whole downstairs deck.

At this point, we had already suspected that Sue was pregnant, so I didn't want her anywhere near the fumes.

Like the staining technique? Trust me, by this point my knees and legs ached from all the kneeling.

Last Updated: 1/21/08