Refinishing the deck with Behr Deck Over

Oh our back deck. I have a love hate relationship with it- it was just so ORANGE. It drove me crazy. Also you could tell the previous owner did not apply the stain and sealer appropriately because major chunks were starting to appear. 

First of all, if I ever want a deck and I continue to live in the Pacific Northwest then I will just spend the money and build a deck out of composite. Yes I understand it is like 2-3 times the cost but trust me it will save you so much work in the long run. Honestly, we considered rebuilding the whole thing with composite but the wood underneath wasn't that bad- we could tell it was a newer deck with the stain not put on correctly and we knew that this is not our forever home so we didn't want to make a huge investment on aspect that we may not see a good return. 

The orange deck before 

We decided to restain the entire deck with Behr Advanced Deck Over. This product is specifically made for decks that have some damage to them. It is a stain and sealer all in one. 

The biggest thing you need to be aware of when redoing a deck is the time of year that it is occurring. This is strictly a summer project (unless you live somewhere really dry and warm- like Tuscon). Everything needs to be able to dry out really well in order to have the best application possible. 

Step 1: Power Wash 

We have an electric power washer and I purchased some cleaning solution specifically made for decks that goes directly into the washer. I would spray the cleaning solution on and let it sit for 5-10 minutes on the deck before going in with the power washer. You want to be quite careful with this that you are using the appropriate bit on the washer- if you use the hardest bit you can destroy the wood in your deck. My goal was to pull up most of the stain but it wasn't imperative that I get every last bit off. 

Step 2: Wait 

It is important that after you power wash that you let your deck dry out- and I mean really dry out. I would say wait at least a month. So I power washed in late June and didn't apply the stain until about late August. Yes the deck will be dry to touch after a few hours but it takes days to weeks for the wood to dry out from an effective power wash. If you don't let the wood dry than the sealer will actually seal the moisture inside the wood and the wood will rot from the inside out. 

Step 3: Apply Stain 

So just to be perfectly honest Behr Advanced deck over states that you should strip all of the stain off entirely before applying the deck over. I basically refused to do that for a few reasons-1. I HATE stripper, I've used it in the past and I don't like how harsh it is. I accidentally got some on me and I had mild chemical burns and that was no fun. 2. I was pregnant/had a newborn during this time and I didn't want us exposed to the harsh chemical. 3. Stripping an entire deck is expensive and very time consuming. 4. I had read multiple blogs and seen multiple youtube videos of people using the deck over and having the same results without stripping the entire deck. I think as long as you are going darker than the original stain it is fine. 

After much deliberation we chose "Dark Walnut" stain color. We bought a 5 gallon bucket. This stuff is hard to clean so we purposely purchased brushes and rollers that we could just pitch. 

My husband, my father in law and I worked on the deck for two days. We had two people working on painting all the spindles because that was so time consuming and another person used the roller to get the floor of the deck. It is important as well to go in with a paint brush on the floor and make sure you are getting good coverage in between each board on the ground- this is the main breeding ground for moisture and algae so you want to make sure it is well sealed. 

The deck over requires two coats to be completely sealed. It requires a dry time of 4 hours but we let it sit overnight because it took us so long to do the first coat. 

The first coat took FOREVER- also we used probably 60% of our 5 gallon bucket that we purchased. This is normal the wood soaks up a lot of the material on the first pass. One aspect that really surprised us was that the deck over is pudding thick consistency. Because we chose chocolate brown it literally looked like chocolate pudding- we were all wanting pudding after this project was completed.

The deck after coat one 

 The deck after coat two 

After the second coat we tried to stay off the deck for 72 hours. We didn't put any furniture on it until about a week later- this was mostly because we went out of town right after we completed the project.

Overall we are really pleased with how it turned out. I feel like it compliments the house a lot more now. I am sad that we don't have the natural wood grained look that I like but I knew that in order to get that we would have to strip the wood and that wasn't an option for me. My goal for this is next year to be able to wash it off with the lightest setting on the power washer and that should be the majority of the maintenance for a few years. I'm not sure it will last more than 2-3 years just because of where we live and all the moisture that we have during the winter months.