Deck help

Hi. I have a deck that has been stained and probably 20 years old. I read many how to's on method and product... Was thinking of using solid or semi solid stain... as you will see there are different colors in wood on different parts now. If I use a solid should I prime? Would a semi solid be better without priming? Planning to clean green off and scrub entire deck well. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks , Bob

 

I'm not a deck finishing expert, but someone should be along shortly who could help.

While you're in the work-mode, you might consider doing something about the tripping hazard at the stairway leading up to the entry door--first riser is only half the depth of the others, and is an accident waiting to happen. And while you're there, you might want to address the support posts embedded directly in the ground--not good. Premature failure about to happen.

 

Clean the deck first and see how it looks. You might be able to use a semi-transparent stain [if you want] otherwise a solid stain would be in order. Normally solid stains don't require a primer. About the only time a primer would be used under a solid stain is with cedar or redwood decks and a light colored solid latex stain - where tannin bleed would show.

btw - welcome to the forums Bob!

 

I think most of the points I was going to offer was covered.
I do however have to ask, is some of the decking painted (darker brown pieces)?
Your picture below looks similar to my decking, in which the previous owner opted to paint the deck instead of staining.


One tip I will offer is to use normal brushes and do not try to use a paint sprayer. We tried using a sprayer on my parent's deck and used twice as much stain on the 1/4 deck then we did on the remaining 3/4 of the deck.

 

Ya, there is a little more to spraying than just pumping the stain thru the airless. Occasionally I'll spray a deck but usually it isn't worth the extra work of keeping the stain off of everything else. Also when a coating is sprayed over wood it needs to be back rolled/brushed to work the stain into the wood.

 

Thanks to all for your input! not sure what to do about the stairs, but as far as the deck I think I will use a darker oil based semi solid from cabot. I am not sure what the previous owners did to the deck that is different colors. I did clean it and will be staining this Saturday!

 

Hi BridgeMan45! I'm not sure how to fix the riser issue. If you can tell me what needs to be done that would be great. For the posts embedded into ground, the house inspector put that in his review before I bought the house. He said it was something I should remedy in the future. Can I dig below the posts and pour concrete to the surface and attach post to footing created? Thanks again, Bob

 

The riser discrepancy should be addressed either by rebuilding the entire stairway (making all risers equal in height) or by lowering the approach grade at the bottom riser such that its height is approximately the same as the ones higher up. Since the latter is usually not practical, you will probably be reworking the stairway. You'll have to cut and install new stringers, making the rise of each step the same by dividing the total grade difference by the total number of new risers. And allowing for the tread thickness, of course, such that all steps are the same height when you've finished putting the treads back on. In theory, you want all risers to be no more than 7-3/4" high, and no more than 3/8" difference between the shortest and tallest.

Regarding the embedded posts, you can do what you described to make things right. If it were mine, I would first poke into each post at ground level (ice pick works great for this) to see if there is any rot present. If things look and feel solid, it's possible you could just live with things the way they are until such time that a fix is needed and you want to undertake the footing installation project. Every location is different, meaning different species of wood and different types of preservative treatment, combined with the soil drainage characteristics, can possibly result in a scenario that works acceptably without the need for concrete footings. It's not the norm, but is possible. The last place we had in Colorado had a 25-year-old deck with posts embedded directly in the well-drained decomposed granite soil, and all were solid as a rock--no concrete footings necessary.