Mrs. DIY Stains the Deck!

If you don't think you can DIY, let Mrs. DIY show you that you can!

Well folks, it has been a busy fall season here at the Headquarters! Between juggling side hustles , winning awards (one could say that I was nominated for a chain letter, but that’s beside the point), and getting a new boiler , there has been quite a bit going on!

There’s also holding down day jobs and raising kids, but really, how much stuff can I list before it gets ridiculous?

As if all of this wasn’t enough, Mrs. DIY has decided that she has had enough of looking at our crappy back deck. Ok, it’s more like a tiny little porch. Stop judging!

First a little introduction to Mrs. DIY. She is incredibly adept at many things, especially those relating to human psychology and behavior. She makes her money with her brain, and does not have a ton of experience using tools. Did that stop her from trying ? No friggin way!

After borrowing a palm sander from a neighbor, she donned a dust mask  (a real one, not the one in the link) and got down to sanding. This is an important step, as it removes any flakes and imperfections that might fall off after the stain or paint job, potentially leaving ugly unpainted (or unstained) blotches. Nobody likes blotches. Except that artist who made a fortune throwing paint at the wall.

Once the sanding portion was finished, she ran over everything with the shop vac to get rid of the leftover dust. No pics of that, but as she has a bit of an obsession with vacuuming in general, I’m pretty sure that step did not get skipped.

As the floor of the deck was a little damp due to the unending rainfall and high humidity of this bizarrely wet summer, the intrepid and unstoppable Mrs. DIY proceeded to slap a solid coat of exterior latex paint on the wooden toprails around the deck.

I wisely avoided giving any unsolicited advice or criticism during this process, and therefore was able to avoid ending up with a wet paintbrush contacting my cheek at high velocity. Take note, partners of aspiring DIYers.

Here we see a beautiful before- and after- of the top rail.

After she had finished the rail, she then decided to swing around and hit the front railing with the same procedure. Unfortunately, children only have the mental capacity to reserve Do Not Touch status to one object at a time, and so the front railing was subjected, along with the front door handle and a piece of wall, to unmitigated molestation. Look for an update on removing paint from doorknobs in the future.

Unfortunately, though the motivation to continue was strong in the heart of my lovely partner and foreman of the Great Deck Project, the weather was not so congenial. The rains came yet again, and the deck absorbed an unhealthy amount of moisture. Puddles aren’t great at taking deck stain, so the project had to wait.

Eventually, as in a week and a half later, the weather finally cooperated. The deck was fit to be stained!

In true fearless DIY fashion, Mrs. DIY grabbed an old paintbrush and a small container and got to work!

Having already done the hard part, i.e. sanding, she was able to simply work her way across the deck with a nice thick coat of stain. The nice thing about painting on the floor is you don’t have to worry so much about runs, so it really is a simple and satisfying task.

The trick here, and this is something to be stressed, is not to paint yourself into a corner! Start in a corner and work your way to an exit point, as you won’t be able to walk on it to get out!

Yep, simple as that. once she had a nice coat of stain on there, it was just a matter of waiting a couple of days for it to dry and then it was ready for walkin’!

I should also mention that she came back and did the balusters a little later on as well so everything matched.

And there you have it! A super simple DIY project with a great outcome that will not only help protect your investment but it’ll make it look better too! We spent about $24 for a gallon of stain, and we were easily able to cover our 7’x4’ deck with a tiny portion of it. We also spent a little on the exterior paint (I forget how much exactly, but it was less than the stain) and we used an old paintbrush from the back of the garage, so the whole project was done for less than $40.

Before:

After:

Mrs. DIY spent a total of maybe an hour and a half to two hours on this, and it will protect our deck and hand rails for at least a year, maybe even up to five! Not bad!

Has this inspired you to tackle a project of your own? Let us know about it so we can laugh at y…er, cheer with you!