If the Summer passed you by like a snap of your fingers, and you still have lots to do around the house in preparation for winter, you are not alone. One of the best things to do while we still have some dry and sunny days left in late-Summer and early-Fall is prep your old deck for winter. Maybe you do something like water proofing or stain every year, but you’re getting tired of spending the time. And after many years, your deck still looks weathered and ready to be replaced.
There’s a great alternative to replacing the wood decking, especially if it’s just the surface boards that look shabby. Rust-Oleum Deck Resurfacer is 20 times thicker than paint that forms a durable surface on existing decks (wooden or concrete). It fills in old cracked wood very nicely and looks great.
I recently applied it to my backyard deck, which was in pretty bad shape. Since our deck gets lots of shade during the winter, it has the tendency to attract mildew and moss, if not kept clean. Regardless of how much time I put in sweeping the leaves off and adding waterproofing every year, it still takes a beating. So, I thought I would give Rust-Oleum Deck Restore a try before having to replace the entire deck surface with new lumber.
The other great thing about using this product is that is saves a lot of time. If you have to replace your wooden surface with new deck boards, it’s a major project, plus you have to deal with disposal of the old wood. Using Deck Restore, you just have to clean your deck off with Deck Wash (make sure you scrub to get rid of all mildew and any organic material). Letting the deck dry for a day is best, but if you’re surface is in direct sunlight, it may not take a full day.
The next step is to prime the surface with RockSolid Deck Start Wood Primer. This will assure good adhesion to the deck surface.
Once you start rolling it on, you’ll notice it’s super thick and you have to move slowly to make sure you get all the cracks filled. If there are really deep cracks, you may have to pre-fill with a crack filler. You may have to roll over badly weathered boards more than twice to get all areas covered.
After you have completed the first coat, you may or may not decide to apply a second coating. Rust-Oleum recommends a 2nd coating, but if your surface isn’t too badly damaged or weathered you could probably get away with one coat. I only did one coating, but time will tell.
So far, we are loving the new look of our deck. There were quite a few colors to choose from, which makes it even more compelling to use Deck Restore instead of buying new lumber. The rough surface that is created by the Rust-Oleum roller pad make a great non-slip surface.
Johnsons Home & Garden carries a full line of Rust-Oleum products, so be sure to ask our Paint Department experts about Deck Restore.
