Our back deck celebrated its 18th birthday. Anyone who has a deck knows that it needs lots of upkeep work. Lots and lots of upkeep work. So, as the years and brutal sun wore on, so did our deck. It wore out to be more specific.

We had two choices when the wearing out became too obvious to the human eye: paint or replace. Since my daughter and husband built the deck together, 18 years ago, we knew it was solid. If anything had to be replaced, it would only be the top boards. The foundation, as I said, was still solid. It was the flooring deck that was the problem. Once we chose to repair, the next step was to paint.

It’s not advisable to paint decks. It never comes out right. But Lowe’s, at that time, announced to us, via one of their in-store salespeople, that Lowe’s was selling a brand new deck paint, just perfect for what was ailing our deck! We bought it. Hired a professional back deck painter. He did all the work (scrubbing, sanding and cleaning). The deck looked great for a year. Then, the pain started peeling.

A trip back to Lowe’s and they confirmed the paint was defective and they took it off the market. Now what? I had a ruined deck. I also had some paint left. I kept repainting over a patch that lifted. Eventually I ran out of paint. Eventually we ran out of repair money. Replacing the floor boards was going to be in the thousands of dollars.

What did we do?

We had hired a water pressure treatment guy to do the north side of our home this past weekend. Hubby casually mentioned our back deck. The guy took a look. Said he could get the old paint off for $100. We said “Let’s do it!”. He did. The paint is gone. The wood underneath looked cleaned, rustic and fantastic. Our deck is back together, as if nothing ever happened.

This was the condition of the floor deck 3 years ago. We chose to paint rather than replace
This is what the furnished deck looked like, with the bad flooring.
This is what the deck looked like after it was painted. Unfortunately, the paint only lasted intact one year. After the winter, the paint started peeling off in clumps. It was a disaster.
This was the side of the house we were having power washed (it gets a lot of wind and dirt). We asked the contractor to look at our deck. He said for $100 he could get the bad paint off. He did!
Contractor was able to power wash the paint off. What was revealed under it all, was still a perfectly good, clean, rustic-looking flooring deck.
Here is the deck today! The 18 year old wood still looks good. Is strong and sturdy. End of story.