Friday, July 17, 2015

Friday deck project

 This is not an ad.
 My home sits at 8200 feet altitude and most of it was built in 1951. It's been added on to over the years along with a 400 square foot wrap around deck. We love it and it's a part of our home that we use every day. But living at high altitude is brutal on everything. With the exception of most nights the weather is always intense with either pounding sun or snow or as we've seen this year, rain. The wood on the deck is getting worn and our neighbor just replaced his ~300 square foot deck with Trex and it cost him over $10,000. I looked at replacing half of the deck with flagstone but ended up not liking the idea. Behr sells a decking treatment called Deckover and Home Depot recently offered a mail in rebate on 5 gallons so we decided to try it. It's basically this crazy thick and heavy paint with sand in it and it makes the wood very similar to Trex. It seals the wood and fills in cracks that water can get in to. Here's a few pics of the progress so far...

Before and after. 

The added sand really gives it texture. This is a first coat so the second will fill in the small cracks. You do have to fill the larger cracks with a brush. 


First coat with contrast.

I was hoping it would match the house a little better. The house is oil stained and the sun fades it very quickly. 

The next project will be replacing the beams under the deck near this tree. I've had to cut the hole bigger a couple of times but you can see from the nails that there's a beam that has already been moved and will need it again soon. 
 So we'll see how it ends up. Right now my premature thought is that it will be great. 5 gallons cost me $120.00 which isn't too far removed from the stain that I used a few years ago. This seems more durable and will hopefully protect the deck well. I'll write a follow up post in 20 years to let you know.

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