Good times this evening running around Providence with Dustin. We ninja’ed and scared the poop out of a few people by dropping from above, in spaces where people would normally think that there *was* no “above”.
Earlier in the day, I wrestled with the deck. The story, for those who have not heard goes like this: We bought this house, see. The previous owner painted the deck. Painted decks suck, because you need to re-paint them basically every year if you wish them to not look like poo.
I painted the deck last fall, with a gentle nod to scraping and painting, and this spring it looked like poo.
So this spring, I decided to go whole hog. Really, seriously, do the job right. I powerwashed, scraped, wire brushed, power-washed again, scraped again … at each stage, I was always left with scraps of paint that I could pick off with my fingernails. Is this because my technique sucks? Sure. Fire. Whatever. I don’t really want to paint the GDMF thing every year, so I’m not prepared to paint on top of non-adhering paint.
Went to Home Despot today. Bought four sub-$10 solutions:
* A planer.
* Stripper (har har har)
* A wire brush attachment for the drill
* A scrubber attachment for the drill.
None of these worked really well. The scrubber attachment was a close tie with the planer…but either requires about half an hour of work per board. At 25 boards, that’s too much.
I could replace all the material on this deck for $400, For $800, I could get the awesome recycled plastic decking. I’m starting to think that’s a good idea.
However, before that, there is this: I pried up one of the boards and realized that, true to form, doofus previous owner did not paint the underside of the boards. Therefore, I’m going to try flipping them over and staining them. Hopefully this will work.
Wish me luck.
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