My Fixer Upper - Deck 3.0

Ahhhhhh.  I have wanted this and worked for this for seemingly so long!  

My deck is finally refinished.

Here's what it looked like when we bought the house 4 years ago.
It has the Previous Owner's items out there.

Mr. Previous Owner did have it freshly stained for showings.  

It looked great.  But after a year, it all peeled.

Then in the Summer of 2017

my incredible mom refinished the deck 

while we were on a TAP trip.
Check out how cute Deck version 2.0 looked....

It looked so fresh and clean!  I loved it!  

But sadly, after 1 season, it too peeled.
Horribly!

Then we had to decide if it was time to just replace the deck boards 

with composite decking that would be maintenance-free.  

My thought was, if I can manage a full refinish, 

maybe I can save us the expense of all new boards.

It took me over a month thanks to a cooler and longer than normal Minnesota spring
to use a chemical stripper (temps needed to be above 65F for it to work).

After stripping, I power washed the deck and repainted the rails.  The rails were fine after my mom's paint job, but when I power washed, some paint flaked off, so it needed a full re-paint.

After power washing, I took the belt sander to the floor and 

tried to see if there was still some good wood underneath. 
If the wood is still young enough, it should, ideally, soak up the new stain and
should last for years!

 After weeks and weeks, battling cool temps and spring rains, 

plus many hours of drying time per coat of stain.....

ITS DONE!!!!!

Today Ethan and I moved furniture back in place.  

It needs flowers, but it may be too late to really enjoy that.  We'll see.

But Deck version 3.0 is ready to enjoy!

Now onto more projects in this 25 year old house!

(Coming soon in a week or 2 ... An upstairs bathroom update)