DIY Deck Refresh

Before Deck RefreshI’m a bit embarrassed to show you the before shots…but it is a necessary evil I suppose. This deck clearly has not been washed in years. Oops.

PrepFirst things first, this baby clearly needed to be hosed down. It was so, so, so, so dirty. Like way more disgusting than I anticipated. We recently purchased a  pressure washer  knowing that we would have a lot of cleaning projects coming up. Pretty reasonably priced and it worked great! You can always rent one but if you think you will use it for more than 3 projects, it basically pays for itself. We went over the deck surfaces two times to get all of the dirt and grime off prior to painting.

Next up for prep, I took my palm sander and went over a few spots that needed smoothing out. I also grabbed a hammer and drove in any nails that had creeped out a little bit. Aside from that, there was really no additional prep work for this project! Feeling super happy right about now that I didn’t decide to strip things off and stain! That would’ve taken for EVER.

ApplicationWe started by applying the white paint on the railings using a brush. This was just a basic untinted white. Like I said before it goes on super thick and fills in a lot of the grooves so things look really nice and crisp and clean! We did one coat but in an ideal world we probably should’ve done two full coats here. Much cleaner looking already!

Ignore the chipped paint on the house.Believe it or not, I also hand brushed the deck surface. Per the Sherwin-Williams employees, a brush is better to apply this product down into the cracks of the wood (though the website says a roller is fine). I picked out the darkest gray color on the chart for the deck and dock paint series (charcoal, I believe). It looked pretty dark on the chart and I was hoping for something almost black, but this ended up being only a shade or two darker than the gray we had before. Overall, I like it better than the previous color and am really happy with how it turned out.

After deck refresh!

Before and afterOverall, this deck refresh took about 1 full day to do. It was a lot of work but totally worth it because now our deck looks like new! Overall, we spent about $150 on paint and supplies (not including the pressure washer). I’ll let you know in the future how this product holds up though I can tell you from previous experience that after two or three years it does start to show some wear and tear. But in my mind, decks require some upkeep every few years anyway, no matter what product you use. I really loved how the Sherwin Williams deck and dock made my wood look like new! Can’t wait to add some seating and decor!