ET's Info-Stew

Today I finally finished painting the deck. I started on September 21st, and 12 days later I finally got it complete. Well, it's not a pretty job. For one, power-washing damaged the wood making deeper indentations than there would have otherwise been. So here an there are small divots of unpainted wood. Also, I had no good way of getting between planks, so it is easy to see the unpainted sides in between some planks. But if you don't look too closely, it still is a decent job, and one I hope to never do again.

Procrastination wasn't the cause of the 12-day chore. I was out there working on the deck after work and on the weekend days. But it was slow work. Up until today I was only half-way done thanks to equipment failures and rain predictions (which never came). But I decided that today I was going to finish, come what may.

I've been using this pump-mop kind of thing where you put the paint in a jug, pump to add some pressure, and pull a valve handle to allow paint to go through the plastic tubes and soak a specially designed pad at the end of a pole. It is really handy for keeping things fairly clean, not having to go back and forth with a paint brush to the can, and because it can be used standing up it is better on the back and the knees. But that's where the advantages stop. There is very little precision and control so you end up having to go over areas multiple times to fill in unpainted gaps. About half-way through today's work the pole broke, so I had to so the rest of the deck by hand. I continued to use the pump mechanism, but instead of the pole I just brushed using the pad assembly in my hand. To my surprise this was actually a much easier way to do it. I could much more easily control how much paint I applied and could do touch-ups as I went. As expected it wasn't so comfortable and by the time I was done I was pretty sore. But it is clear to me now that doing the whole deck by hand would have been a lot faster and higher quality.

There's probably still some touch-up that needs to be done, but my eyes started to glaze over the whole thing, so I'm leaving it for another day. I've got a little less than a quart of paint left, which should be plenty. The paint is actually also a sealer, which is great because I would not want to go over the whole deck with another product yet again. It looks like it will do a decent job, so I'm satisfied.

So ends the deck repainting project. Clearly nobody does that much work every year or even every other year. I have to think they either just paint another coat on (since most of the previous coats are chipped away anyway) or just put a sealer on top of the faded paint. As for me, I never intend to do this kind of thing again. I may add a layer of paint or sealer every year or two, but no way am I going to ever do the whole thing again. Jenny and I agree that the next time it comes time to do this whole thing again, we're going to have saved up for a Trex deck.