this week's project: more deck work

Since I've been stressed with this Corporate Finance class, I haven't been willing to take on any big projects around the house (i.e. the kitchen).  And since CJ is gearing up to start school again this fall, our projects have been winding down.  Yes, folks, we've finally come to the time where we don't have twenty-five projects to do at once.

Aside from some fiddling around with his wood lathe, this was CJ's only project for the week:  completing the deck.  I'll have a few other deck-related projects to post about later (they're not entirely complete), but for now, this is what CJ accomplished this week:

That's right -- he sealed the deck!  It doesn't get any more exciting than this.

I pass this along as a lesson learned, for any of you out there who have a deck or will have a deck in the future:

When CJ built the deck back in June and we stained it then, we picked Behr's solid stain, which goes on more like paint.  We were super pleased with it ... until Henry went outside.  Part of our problem was that we probably didn't let it sit long enough before letting Henry run outside (read:  wait more than 24 hours).  So, dirty little paw prints were all over our brand new deck within ten minutes of letting Henry outside.

Our second problem was that we didn't apply water sealant on it.  The stain was marketed as a water proofer (like an all in three sort of deal), but we found that water didn't exactly bead up on it like it should.

These two problems go hand in hand.  With Henry prints all over it and without water sealant on it, I couldn't get the dirty prints to come off.  Thanks, Henry.  So this week, CJ worked to get the paw prints off, stained a few more places, and then placed water sealer on it.

We hope this will solve the paw print problem and will protect our deck a little better.

Oh, and another lesson learned?  Don't buy the sprayers they sell in the store for the water sealant.  CJ said it was a piece of junk, and he ended up doing most of it by hand after all (well, sort of).

The bad news to all of this is that it needs to sit for forty-eight hours, and I fully intend to abide by it this time.  That means that until very late on Saturday night, Henry is banned from the back yard, which means he's now my problem inside.