All Hands On Deck!

Here’s a pic of the unlovely little deck around the hot tub.  I never wanted a hot tub.  I even asked the seller to remove it to bring the price of the house down (she was going on and on about it and it’s virtues – I had to put a stop to it).  But actually, the husband uses it all the time as do the visiting kids.  My bathing suit has a hole in the knee, so until I fix that I won’t be venturing into the multi musical, strobe lit vat of pulsating water beams (good use of adjectives, huh?) too soon.

So, once the weather proved to me that it was going to stay perfect as it has, I knew I had to tackle the weathered wood or not be surprised when it splintered and cracked it’s way to oblivion.

Now here’s what I find about advice.  Any advice really, but in this case I am referring to painting-a-deck advice.  Talk to more than one expert, throw in your own experience and pick the way you think it should go that’s best for you, your skill set, your time, your wallet and your energy level.  If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know I’m cheap, I have some skills and I like it quick and easy (mind out of the gutter, please).

One expert said I needed an oil primer for decks (Home Depot) that would make it endure 10 years of weather.  I agreed, but bought far too little for the job.  I got this far on a litre:

  

You’d think by now I’d be better at figuring these things out…so to a different expert I went who assured me I didn’t need primer at all!  And the siren song of laziness called to me again and I finished the deck without priming the rest.  Latex porch and floor. Which covered over the oil primer no problemo. It will be interesting to see if the part of the deck that received the primer fares better than the part without. You can’t tell by looking so far.

I now had to decide what pattern I wanted to add, and I went back and forth on this as I tend to do.  I had originally wanted to do Harlequin diamonds but changed my mind quite a few times before actually agreeing with myself that it was still good.  I heard later a sigh of relief from a co-worker when she saw a photo that it wasn’t yellow and blue…to her Harlequin meant clowny…yikes!  That would have been a bit much, even for a colour lover like me.

I found a piece of that foam interlocking stuff from another project, drew a diamond and cut it out with an box cutter.  You could easily use a piece of cardboard like from a pizza box or something.  #MMMMMMpizza. And then you could use either the cut out or the piece with the cut out, cut out. Which evs.

 
I traced out the diamonds on the step, but realized they were too small for the rest of the deck and would look too busy if I continued this size.  I then had to use my mad eyeball skills and draw out the remainder of diamonds with-out a cut out.  I used a T-square from my college days and winged it, as is my way, went back and painted in the diamonds with white latex porch and floor.

You could tape off the diamonds to ensure a crisp edge, I didn’t.  This time I wasn’t concerned about having the edge razor sharp, however, they still turned out quite crisp.  Next came something fun.  Remember the ceiling light fixture I cared not for?

 

I kept the outer plaster ring, and spray painted it to look like a lifesaver ring.

TA DA!  There’s the good shot of whimsey I love so much.  Then, I painted Barbie’s bathing suit on a canvas that had seen better days :

And here is a little staged view of the deck in it’s new life.

 I would love to hear any experiences, good or bad you’ve had with deck painting! Thanks for visiting.

Advertisement