Summer Project: The Deck!

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Jim has been extremely busy working on our home remodel, pretty much since the fall of 2014.  It’s a second job we’re paying for him to have. He works all day then comes home and works all evening. Fortunately, the results have been worth it. He completed the work on our bedroom remodel last year and it looks heavenly.

Unfortunately, just outside the double doors of the bedroom is the world’s ugliest deck.

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This deck was slapped up by the original builders. It’s small and the spindles are so far apart we can’t even let our kids hang out on it for fear of them falling through and plummeting to the ground 15 feet below. I decided something needed to be done about it, but I didn’t want to add to the never-ending list of projects Jim is trying to tackle. Painting a deck does not require any special skills, so I decided to take it on.

The prep work wasn’t too difficult. After helping me carry the heavy things off the deck, Jim did pressure wash it for me — not because I couldn’t but because he really loves pressure washing and I have no emotional attachment to spraying things with water. Then, I scrubbed it down with an acid cleaner the paint specialist at Home Depot recommended. Two days later we were ready to begin. I sent 1yo to my mother-in-law’s house because there was no way I could get this project done with her around. I grabbed enough brushes and rollers for 9yo and 4yo to help me out and we got started. decka1

I won’t go through all the details, but painting a deck is long and tedious. 9yo was really helpful throughout the entire day. 4yo lasted 45 minutes, which is to be expected. In the end, I had enough deck stain to finish the deck, but not the steps.  They need to be repaired anyway, so we’ll save that for another day.

Because we’ve spent gobs of money (at least that’s how it feels) on the rest of the remodel, I tried to do this as cheaply as I could. Deck stain costs what it cost, so I couldn’t do much about that. For furniture, I reused our old patio table and chairs. Despite the rusty, old appearance of the table, I was able to make it look nice with a beachy vinyl table cloth I found at the grocery store for $5. We also lucked out with the deck chairs. My parents had purchased them for their pool, then decided they were too low to the ground. Instead of returning them, they generously gave them to us to use for our deck. Score! I bought cushions for them from the garden section of the Walmart. One of my biggest worries was splinters from the old deck boards. I had two Amazon gift cards I’d been saving from Christmas, so I used them to purchase a 9 x 12 patio rug. Our deck is 10 X 13 so it was perfect! I love the color and design and it goes really well with the gray we used for the stain. The umbrella is a beach umbrella we already had.

The only task remaining is making the railing safer. Our plan is to purchase lattice to attach to the spindles to close up the gaps. I’m hoping to get that done this week so we can start enjoying our evening meals on our deck.

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Overall, I’m extremely pleased with how it looks, how much we spent, and the fact that I did the work myself.