It’s Labor Day weekend and I’ve been laboring! Fortunately, not in the about-to-have-a-baby sense! PHEW! No, I have been working hard on staining our deck.
Our deck has been in baaaaad shape for a few years now. It has been so bad that I never want to be on the deck. It was splintery, dirty and the stain we had done several years earlier was almost non-existent. It was time to get busy and fix it up!
Cleaning then Staining
Because we have such a humongous deck, I had to do one half at a time. It started last Saturday when I had the hubs moved everything off the “upper” deck so I could power-wash all the dirt, grime, and green-goo off.
Three years ago when we first stained the deck, we never got around to the stairs because we had run out of stain and then it got all rainy. Needless to say, they were the first things I decided to stain this time around.
The power washing only took me an hour and then I had to wait for it to completely dry to stain. The next day, I spent TWO hours staining all those gosh-darned stairs! And then…I ran out of stain. I had my hubs stop by a Home Depot and get a 5 gallon sucker of stain because I was determined it was going to get done this time around.
I spent another hour staining the actual decking part and then waited an hour and went back out to repeat the effort.
The “upper” deck.
A Two Weekend Project
This weekend, I started on the monster side of the deck. The BIG 16×14 sucker! I think I spend over 3 hours staining and then staining again the entire side. My daughter wanted to help at first and then petered out half way through because it was so hot and humid. I was working fast, trying to finish and let it dry before the rain hit. {My sweet daughter did redeem herself by making me a Strawberry-Cucumber limeade which I promptly chugged down because the heat was intense!}
The monster side!
I was able to finish it and then hubby had to replace a few boards and some railing that were really messed up.
Next Time
Hopefully this will last a few more years than the first time we stained the deck. It is a big undertaking and it is not pleasant on my low back.
I want to say that this is a job we will hire someone the next time around, but we know it would cost over $1500 to get it done. And frankly…I’m cheap. This time it cost us a little under $200 to fix up the deck. That is $1300 still in our pockets!
Maybe next time it needs to be done, it will be by the new owners because eventually I want to move. Heck…I thought we’d only be in this house for 5 years, but with the lousy housing market we are now heading into our 9th year here.
Tomorrow on Labor Day, I can actually take a break and enjoy the day off!
Do you have any projects you were doing this Labor Day weekend?
