The Brellis House

Staining a deck in July was probably not the greatest idea we’ve had. Although the look of the weathered wood appealed to me, it was getting to be quite dangerous, after rain it would be so slick that you could easily break your neck walking on it, plus one of the boards was almost totally rotted through (and had some beautiful moss growing on it).  Here are some pictures of it before:

The power washing part wasn’t too bad on a hot day.

But the drying part took weeks since we’ve been getting afternoon thunderstorms just about every day. Finally after 3 straight 100 degree days it dried out and we waited for the temperatures to get below 90 to stain. It took weeks to find days in between rain to finally get it all stained. We were staining with headlamps until 10PM one night. We really should have waited for a less rainy, more predictable weathered month, but oh well here it is! We really had no idea that deck stain was more like paint than wood stain, so the gray is going to take some getting used to. If we were going to do it again we might go with a transparent weather-proofer rather than a colored stain.Here’s how it turned out, plus some photos we snapped after putting up some string lights and eating a delicious pizza dinner outside.

Next, we’ve got to clean and stain our new deck furniture.