When we were house hunting, we wanted to buy a home with a beautiful backyard – lots of foliage and a deck with a spot for our gazebo. We searched for months before we found our current house. It had pretty much everything we wanted outdoors, including a gorgeous redwood deck. Luckily for us, the deck was fairly new when we moved in our new home.
We have lived here for about 7 years now and though we still enjoy our backyard {and gazebo!}, our deck gets direct sunlight and has faded over time. Three or so years ago, we noticed how terrible the deck was looking and we decided we needed to have it refinished. We hired someone to do this, as it is a very tedious process. He stripped the old finish off {which took several days}, stained the deck again, then applied a protective coating over the whole deck. It looked beautiful!
Flash forward to last summer. Our deck is faded and the protective coating has chipped and peeled. Our deck looked extremely pitiful again, and we decided to have it refinished, yet again. This time, in addition to refinishing it, he had to replace almost every single nail with screws. The nails had popped up over time, and it was a safety issue at this point. He also had to replace some of the boards that either had the beginnings of dry rot or had splintered. Talk about a long project! Not to mention the expense of the deck building materials that were needed for this project, and the cost of labor.
Though it hasn’t even been one year since the deck was last refinished, it is showing signs of fading again. My husband and I are really tired of dealing with this every few years, so we have been looking at our options for alternative decking materials. A friend of ours has a composite deck that has held up amazingly well over the years, and we think this is the route we need to take. One brand we have been looking at is Procell Decks. From all the information we have read about them, they are extremely durable and last for years. How nice it will be to finally have a deck that we don’t have to worry about, and one less “to-do” item on our list of home repair projects!
3 Responses
We stopped doing maintenance to our deck too-in fact we don’t use it anymore (our deck was built by the previous owners and attached on the left side of our concrete slab
porch. Since we are talking additions now, it’s only a matter of time before it gets yanked out…)
The composite decks are the way to go but the cost is going to be salty-worth it in the end if you consider the money you put into your other deck though.
I agree!
I have a wooden deck too and we stained it last summer and it already looks like it needs another coat this year!