Refinish the Back Deck

The deck was put in in December 2003, refinished in June 2005, and then refinished again in October 2010.  Seems like a good time to do it again.

So first, I power washed the entire deck, to get it ready to re-finish.

This required removing everything from the deck.

Well, except the grill.  I just moved it around and worked around it.

As before we decided to use Australian Timber Oil Penetrating Finish (Natural).  It should have taken about 2 to 2.5 gallons, for about 600 square feet.  But we decided to spray paint it, instead of doing it all by hand.  We borrowed a spray painter from my son-in-law, Byrd,  and learned how to use it by sealing some of the fence. 

We needed to mask off all the house that was not to be spray painted.

 Some of the railing, and around the edges, I did by hand, with a brush.

Then once the spray painter was cleaned and flushed and primed, it went very fast, sucking down 3 gallons of the penetrating finish in just minutes.  I made another run to Lowe's to get another 2 gallons, and was able to finish the deck with that.  So 5 gallons (at $42.98 a gallon, plus tax).

Remove the plastic wrap masking, and wait a day for it to all "dry".

The clean-up of the spray painter (flush out the lines and the pump, clean them all down, fill them with "Pump Protector") and all the cans and plastic wrap and cardboard and rags and everything, took the rest of the day.

Basically two days work -- one to power wash it and one to re-finish it -- spaced a week apart (to let the power wash dry).