This time of year, it is a good idea to seal and/or paint your old decks to prevent further rotting and expand its life. 

My husband and I are new homeowners since June. While I’ve had a lot of experience decorating homes both inside and out throughout my lifetime so far, I’ve never re-sealed a deck. Our deck is both old and new. Due to a large falling branch, the prior homeowners were forced to replace the railings and stairs, but left the old main structure since it was not damaged by the falling tree. That made for a weird looking deck: half was a new pale wood, the other was old and graying. So we decided to take a risk and try a new product that we stumbled upon in Home Depot. It isn’t stain, it isn’t paint/sealant, it’s a different product entirely. Called “Restore”, this stuff is actually more like stone. It creates a “sand” like surface that completely seals and revamps old deck surfaces. 

We first cleaned and bleached the deck to remove any debris and mold. Taped up the railing posts and doorway to ensure the splatter didn’t ruin anything (and it will splatter, so make sure you cover things you don’t want to “paint”) I also recommend that you wear clothes you don’t care about- this stuff dries in clumps and dries hard. There is no washing it out! The kit provides you with a special rolling brush, so we just used that and followed the instructions; including “tinting” the product to the color we wanted. It was a lovely sunny day when we started, but 3/4 of the deck done, black clouds rolled in and it started pouring down. Rain had not been part of the weather forecast that day and we were forced to abandon the project. Luckily “Deck Restore” requires two coats and so we felt our deck wasn’t yet ruined.

Second attempt and we were finished in 30 minutes. We had to wait a full 24hrs before the second coat, but in total it took us less than two hours to do both coats. It dried to a lovely “stone-like” surface and turned out great! See photo for finished results. 

Here is the website for the product:

http://www.synta.com/prod_restoredeck2.html

Whether you use this product or not, it is a good time of year to seal your decks before winter rolls in! It is also a relatively easy project that doesn’t take too long.      

deck