deck refresh

5 years ago when we bought our house, we sealed our deck quickly and never even touched our screened in porch. lets say it was long overdue for some updates to the deck before things go too crazy! previously I have had my herbs and potted plants on the deck that were just adding moisture to the deck. The bottom few stairs were becoming slick when it rained so it was certainly time for an update! 

if you're taking on a project like this yourself, make sure you have your calendar cleared and note the weather. you need some time to clean & pressure wash the deck (this could be done in light rain if needed) but the deck must dry for 48 hours before applying the sealant. After that, the sealant must have 24 hours to dry without rain....and of course no walking on the deck for 72 hours after the sealant has been applied. 

Here are some before shots (notice the green and black too)...yikes!

1st step was applying the Behr deck cleaner. After that soaked for 10-15 minutes, I pressure washed all the wood surfaces. This got a majority of the overall green & black off the deck and overall freshened up the look...but now it was time to make it look more consistent.

After your deck dries, you'll need to still sweep it off just before you go to stain. You may also choose to pressure wash under the deck (helps clean the cracks between the boards) as well as use your shop vac to make sure you aren't just pushing dirt and debris around.

For the deck I used a transparent Behr Premium weatherproofing in cedar naturalstone (there are three colors: natural, cedar naturalstone & redwood). It was necessary to use the board brush (exact width of the boards) as well as the small roller brushes that they sell at Home Depot meant for the rungs--this helps with drips and ensures that you get good even coverage. I would recommend getting the paint counter to shake the can for you & provide you with one of their wooden sticks to stir up the gallon as you need it.

Here's a shot of the banister done with one coat, freshly applied, and you can see the floor boards below that are still not sealed.

1st coat drying in the sun! 

Notice how great the rain looks puddled vs. being absorbed in the wood...and then the sun came out and dried it all up!

For the screened in porch, I chose a semi-transparent Premium Behr Waterproofing deck stain. This was great in that it provided more color, but still allowed some of the wood coloring to show through. There are many color choices to choose from and they are all mixed at the paint counter. The color that we did was called Castle Grey.

In starting the project on our screened in porch, I realized that the boards were painted with a solid finish color by the prior owner. They were slightly red in the finish and I did want a more updated look. It took a bit of pressure washing to clean up the paint off the boards. During this process, I also pressure washed the roof/ceiling and all of the white banisters. 

After one coat, things were looking better already! 

Here is the color after two coats! I love being able to see some of the grain through the stain.

the guest bathroom

so we have our guest bathroom which we honestly rarely use. it is upstairs (oh so inconvenient) and also until recently was not even repainted. it gets little use...so you can only imagine how often its a priority to clean.

well...not any more! we have officially started to rethink our guest bathroom! i'll share some before and after photos along the way but we'll have many stages to show.  first thin that needed to be done was a new paint job. daddy had spackled the cracks in the plaster filled any holes back in june 2010. it hit me when we had company come over for the first time and they saw our bathroom...didn't think i could use the excuse "we just moved in" any more....hence my motivation.

so on a thursday night i poured a glass of wine and got started on the paint. 4 hours later and very late in the night, the 2nd coat went on. the khaki, "dessert storm" bathroom went to white. we have black and white tiles throughout the bathroom and white sink, toilet, tub etc all which will stay the way they are.

the next problem was that we could not use a standard shower curtain if we wanted it to touch the ground...so carrie came in and measured for an extended shower curtain to give us the height we need in the bathroom. also, to make our project more complicated, our closet does not have a door so we submitted an order to deb to help us out with that too!

stripe is for the valance over our window and the shower curtain will be in the ikat print

very cluttered guest bath storage no one wants to see

finally a window valance in a cute stripe will finish the jobs for mom off nicely!! to top things off joe's "poop stool" for reading when going potty that has been quarantined to the upstairs bathroom which was an old blue bedside table from his childhood was sanded, sanitized, and repainted the same color gray as our den to house our new gray guest towels. 

new towel color goes perfectly with the purplish gray in the shower curtain

Stay tuned to see the final product & more updates along the way!