The back deck was rebuilt in 2003, and then refinished in 2010 and 2017. About 7 years apart. Which means it is overdue. The main problem is getting it cleared off to work on. To ease that, we decided to do it in two pieces. First we move all the stuff from the right half over to the left half. Then we clean and refinish the right half. After that is dry, we move everything over to the right half, and clean and refinish the left half.
Luckily, there are two long deck pieces running down the middle of the deck that meet in the middle. So first we move everything off the right side.
Then we power wash the deck, to clear off all the old stuff.
As before, we use Cabot's Australian Timber Oil (Natural color). We buy that from Lowe's at $60 a gallon, and need 3 gallons.
We use a wide paint brush to apply the finish. It makes the deck look quite a bit darker.
The back half of the deck, up against the house, under the roof, has aged quite a bit different from the exposed front.
After a couple of days, we move all the stuff onto this refinished half and we repeat this process on the other half of the deck.
It takes 4 hours to do the other half of the deck. The part near the house
and the part away from the house.
In addition the stairs needed to be refinished.
and we gave special attention to the handrails. We sanded them down with the belt sander, and put a coat of the Timber Oil on it, then waited for it to dry and put another coat on top of that. Previously, leaning on the handrail risked splinters. The hope is that the sanding, and two coats, will minimize that. With a little light hand sanding after everything is dry, that seems to have worked.
