Throwing it back to when the weather was nice and there were leaves on the trees!

Here’s where I (was) working during an amazing week of PTO in late summer:

A couple initial problems with the deck …

Firstly, it’s super weathered, some of the deck boards and rail posts are loose or popping up, and there’s some minor splitting throughout:

Secondly, it’s way out of level (gridlines added for effect):

Second problem first – early-on, my contractor and his crew came in with a new deck footer and post on the left, since the old one was starting to get squishy and rotten. I didn’t help too much with that other than by expertly jumping around on the deck afterwards to see if it was still wobbly –

Once the deck was leveled, it was time to address how weathered the boards and rails had gotten.

I found this product at Home Depot –

Basically super thick paint with sand in it so it’s non-slip –

My deck had already been painted at least twice in solid colors, but I was inspired by my left-side neighbor’s deck, which is a dark brown deck with white railings, so I decided to contrast with that and do a lighter deck (also good for not burning your feet) with a dark railing.

(Woodchuck also looks like it’ll be a close match to what’s there now, but – spoiler alert – that’s not going to be the case.)

Also hoping as much visual interest as I can give the deck, I can distract from the spruce behind it, which I hate.

Anyway, to start the repairs I bought deck screws, outdoor caulk, some deck-cleaning soap stuff, a garden sprayer to apply it, and then three gallons of the lighter deck paint and a gallon of the darker deck paint.

To prep, I first went over the entire deck with a paint scraper tool thing, pulling up flaking paint/ splinters and screwing down loose boards or posts as I went. Then, I sprayed down the whole deck with the soap, let it sit, and then gave everything a thorough hosing-off. The last step was to re-check the whole thing and fill in any gaps with outdoor caulk, which you can kind of see below –

(Also, all of this needs to be done when it’s not too cold, including overnight, and won’t rain for a couple days before or after.)

And then, time to paint!!

I did feel like the paint colors that went on the deck had very little to do with the chips – even the Mahogany color on the railing, which looked like the chip when I’d get it all over my hands, but then painted on the rail itself it just seemed way lighter. And the deck just looked way pinker or purpler or something. But, c’est la vie.

After edging and doing a couple layers with the roller, I went back through and globbed on more paint where things weren’t thoroughly smoothed out – don’t want any splinters!

And I’ll just circle-back to the fact that it was 72 degrees and sunny and no part of this involved being in front of a computer, so it was actually a super relaxing way to spend some PTO.

Once the deck was all painted and need to be left alone to cure for a few days, I ordered some new patio furniture from the brand Purple Leaf on Amazon:

It arrived in four gigantic boxes, and was pretty easy to assemble and then carefully observe from the comfort of my temporarily relocated egg chair:

Here’s the final look!

(Note how much more level it is!)

Here’s the before-and-after:

And lastly the view from the front entry inside the house:

(Eventually, that wall between the kitchen and the dining room is going to come out, so this view will be even more prominent.)

That’s it! Really happy with how much better it looks, and it’ll be much less likely to give anyone tetanus with its smooth new finish.

Debits!

And now for the monies …

It was $898 for my contractor to reinforce one post, and just $233 for the deck paint and repair supplies!

Total spent on The Deck: $1,132

Budget remaining (out of $50,000): $39,895

Thanks for reading!