Catch up—my summer project

We have two decks here and they were both looking rough this spring with all kinds of peeling up going on.  It must have been a latex stain the previous owners used because it was like little strips of rubber that’d stick to your feet as you walked on it.   Not good when hopping in the pool.  Or when trying to maintain pristine clean feet like I do all summer.

Ha! Just kidding!  Have you met me?  I didn’t get the name Princess Brown Foot for nothin. 

And a little side story, one day Bob decided to honor me and my regal feet by bringing a bloody rabbit up across the peely deck.  I had to hurry and close the sliding door or he was gonna deliver it right to the kitchen. Oy, that cat.

 

So anywho….BEFORE

Annoying flakes and strips everywhere!

 

MIDWAY

Power washing (thanks, Karen and Joe!) helped but didn’t strip off nearly as much as I expected so I had great fun for several days hand-using sand paper. 

 

Doesn’t this face just say “Great fun!”?  The line above my nose would suggest otherwise.  And I don’t think this probably counts as a real smile.

This is mid-July and yep, I believe about the very second I decided to get the hair cut off.  We are talkin a hot job!  But it was made tons easier by the two littles being gone (thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!) so I could focus and not be pulled into the kitchen every few hours to provide pesky food and drink.  And no refereeing of brotherly/sisterly spats, if you can imagine my darlings doing that.   It was a quiet place around here and I could definitely concentrate.

AFTER

 

Well, almost after.  One of the top rail boards was in bad shape so I held off on finishing it until Gary got home from the Minnesota trip to plane it down.  After the planing and staining, it looks good.  And in this pic this deck floor looks ugh! fake cedar orange, but I swear it’s not.  I picked out Justin Timberlake, well, actually the stain was called Timberline (and is actually browner than this picture appears) and the reddish stain was called California Rustic.  I liked it because Gary came from California.  And he’s very rustic. 

[Wait, does rustic mean old? 

Or maybe it just means rough.

Either way.  Haha!]

Here’s the deck off the kitchen once finished, much improved I’d say. 

Maybe Bob can kindly keep the blood on the red sections.