He's Got Skills

This is the last of our projects before winter comes and we (really mean Jake) squished it in right before the frost the past 2 weeks. Our deck was in need of a face lift. Its a nice size, but the people who built it didnt treat or do anything to it. So for 4 or more years its been being weathered and this is what it looks like...not a color any kind of wood should be! Actually, I dont have a before before picture up-this is after we cleaned it with some kind of cleaner we got from Lowes. If you can see the fence in the background-that was the color of the deck before before.

So we had to clean it-which was step 1 and then it had to dry. The lady at Lowes told us NOT TO POWERWASH and gave us tons of reasons why. So we picked up some cleaner for $15 sprayed it on and washed it off 10 minutes later. Easy as that.

Jake started out staining the railing since he knew it would be a multi-step process just for the stain. This picture (below) shows the color the best out of the rest of them. A nice cedar-mahogany color to brighten up that ugly dull deck.

This started step 2 of deck staining-the actual deck.

And a couple final pictures-although the sun was so bright you can hardly tell the color.

After 3 days and days between waiting with about 10 hours of work-its complete! And looks great :) Now the fence still looks like crap-so we are trying to decide what we are going to do. Jake thinks he wants to stain it too....I told him I'm not in on that project-its going to take weeks! He's ambitious when it comes to these projects. He has mentioned spray painting the fence, but oddly enough it doesnt bother me as much as the deck did. Its not getting done or even on the list until spring/summer time.

Now, we are going to get started focusing on the nursery which needs painted first-only a project for daddy!