all hands on deck

One of our favorite parts of this house is the deck and the backyard.  The deck was built by our friends (the Nyes) and part of the deck is 25 years old!  That's almost as old as us.  Unfortunately, our deck got no love from the previous owner the 2 1/2 years he lived there.  The wood lacked the rich stain it had before and had algae growing on it.  Since we moved in at the beginning of July, we decided we should take care of it now instead of later.

The hard part of tackling this project was timing it with the weather.  Once you clean it, you have to wait 2 rain-free days for it to dry out and before you can stain it.  We used this deck cleaner and scrubbed and power-washed away.  It took most of the day to clean the deck.  We could not believe the difference it made.

On the left, you can see the clean wood compared to the pre-cleaned wood on the right:

The cleaner.. doin' it's job:

Doesn't it look better?  2 1/2 years worth of dirt, grime, bird poop, and algae... gone!

Oh hey, hot tub. 

After the deck dried out, we had to check the forecast before we could stain it - it can't rain for 2 days after you stain it.  And, since it's an all-day(s) project, we had to make sure the rain-free days fell after a weekend.  So, our project was delayed a little bit.  

Once again, since we knew the previous, previous owners, we called them up and asked what kind of stain they used.  They used this in "oxford brown".  

The deck stain made such a difference on the naked wood:

After an entire day and before the sun finally set, we finished.  It was the most painful project we've done yet.  Since we had to stain between the boards, we used a brush and got on our hands, knees, hips, and butts.  We had bruises on our tibial tuberosities, greater trochanters, ischial tuberosities and lateral malleoli (for you anatomy nerds out there).  And because mosquitoes love me and don't care about Ehren, I was even more miserable.  But so worth it!

After we finished this project, we realized this deck was larger than our previous rental.  Looks like we're moving up in the world... on bruised knees. 

Cozy enjoyed the newly stained deck on the day his manhood was bruised (fixed):

And look how pretty the oxford brown looked during the fall:

Staining our deck was worth the pain, but we're definitely dreading the next time we have to do it.  Until then, we will enjoy it.