Swab the Deck

Ah, that's a clean deck!

Last October, I presented you with the saga of my rotten deck boards.  I took a whole day and replaced all of the horizontal wood.  It looked nice.

For the last few weeks, I've been obsessing over the darkening of the wood.  I know it's supposed to age, but for some reason I just got weird about it.  Deciding to sand it all down and seal it again made me feel better.

Over the last week, I've been sanding the horizontal boards with a belt sander.  That's hard work.  I would say that it wasn't much harder to replace all the boards.  A lot cheaper, as belts are about $5 for a 5 pack, but pretty hard on the back and arms.

I finished sanding the boards this morning and sealed it this afternoon.

When I finished, I came to the realization that just a plain power washing and sealing would have sufficed.  The wood is of course, fine.  I don't know why I got so bent out of shape.  By the time this wood is ready for replacement, the entire deck will be ready for demolition and replacement.  It's 13 years old, after all.

Now, the stairs are a different story.  I replaced those earlier, and used a urethane to coat them.  The urethane has yellowed quite a bit. I might just call time on those and cut some new steps.  Much less trouble than sanding them.

But that's for another day.