ET's Info-Stew

Today Jenny and I had big hopes for our second major home-improvement project. Living here for over a year now it became clear that our deck needed some love and care. Exposed wood was visible in spots and out deck was clearly absorbing a lot of water. We decided on a project to refinish the deck since we have a long string of days with no rain predictions.

Yesterday we went to the hardware store to get the tools we needed. Our first priority was, of course, the paint. We decided upon a solid paint color similar to what our deck already was; given it was our first time with this kind of project we wanted to give ourselves as much margin for error as possible. The paint is also a sealer so it would give us the protection we need. I asked a friendly employee at the hardware store if I needed to do any prep work on the deck, or if I could just go ahead and paint it. He suggested I use some paint stripper to remove the current coats, then apply some wood-prep, which is supposed to remove unsightly stains and make the wood look new, and finally apply the paint/sealer. I walked out of the store with $200 worth of deck refinishing materials and planned out the project.

Since Stage 1 (paint stripper) required a dry deck, I decided that we would sweep and wash the deck that day and begin the rest the next day. That next day my plan was to finish Stage 1 and Stage 2 (which was the wood-prep). The third day we would apply the paint/sealer (Stage 3), since it too required a dry deck.

We started stage 1 at about 12pm, after the house cast a shadow over the deck (Stage 1 should not be done under direct sunlight, apparently). It says to apply the goop to the deck liberally and within 5 to 45 minutes, the paint would start to come off. Sure enough around 1pm we notices spots where the paint was starting to thin. But there seemed to be a problem. Even with a small nozzle on the hose and a deck scrub broom, most of the paint seemed to be completely unaffected. We continued to try to coerce the paint off, until I decided that it just wasn't going to happen. The plans would have to change and just account for the fact that the paint stripper didn't work. And I really didn't like the fact that the deck was all slippery because the paint stripping solution was still doing its thing.

But then it happened. Jenny was somehow able to peel some off the paint off the deck with the hose. Though some would have been happy about this I was not. The amount of effort that it seemed was required to get that tiny bit of paint off, compared with the 600+ square feet size of our deck, made me want to just give up and call in a professional. For another hour and a half Jenny and I worked to get the paint off, but the progress was slow. Still, it seemed, most of the paint was too stubborn. Jenny brought up the idea of renting a power washer, and idea that I initially dismissed. According to the directions a power washer was optional and one must only use a low-pressure power washer (less than 1200 psi) or risk damaging the wood. So it didn't seem like it was going to help. But by 3pm I was bummed and willing to try anything.

So I went to the store and rented a power-washer, the lowest power of which was 2000psi. "Oh well, I'll just have to be careful", I thought. We hooked that puppy up, got it started and right away it was obvious that using the power washer was the right decision. Paint came up without any problems. For the next three hours Jenny and I took turns. During one of Jenny's turns I stood back to inspect how things were going. We were making a mess, probably killing our grass, soaking our deck's wood, stripping paint off of places we didn't was to strip paint from, spending hundreds of dollars, and as it turns out, damaging the wood in the process. 2000psi indeed is too much, but it didn't seem like anything less than 1500psi would remove the paint. And we were still only at Stage 1 with the sun setting. In short, it was turning into a fiasco.

Tomorrow we need to finish Stage 2, saving stage 3 for some time next week. All this needs to be done early in the day because the power washer is due by 3pm, and Jenny is heading out for a business trip. I very much doubt the previous owners went though this process every two years. I'm betting they just slapped on another layer of paint/sealer every year. Now I wish I had just done that.