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July 20, 2017 By Molly

How To Refresh a Deck with Deckover Paint

Our deck was in dire need of a refresh, but we didn’t have to budge for a complete overhaul. Sound familiar? We decided to refresh our deck with deckover paint to give our deck a few more years of life. We know we’ll eventually tear it down and put something in it’s place, but we don’t quite know yet what. And we don’t have the budget for that yet!

So instead of a full tear out, we leveraged “end of season” sales last year to refresh our deck with deckover paint. Looking back now, mid July to early August is really the BEST time to do an outdoor refresh because of all the fabulous opportunities to save.

So let’s dive right in. The old deck was a brown-red with tired looking deck boards. It’s definitely seen better days. Here is how it looked after we tried scrubbing a different area with deck cleaner.

deck before with red brown paint

Yikes! Didn’t really make a difference. Our backyard was one of the top reasons we purchased our home, but we knew even before buying that the deck had seen better days. We wanted a peaceful place to sit and enjoy our yard, so the deck needed some serious TLC. There were a few options we saw to fixing our deck dilemma:

  • Option A:Tear ‘er down! Erect a new deck.
  • Option B: Tear ‘er down! Install a paver patio (We tackled this project at our first home on a smaller scale. We feel fairly confident we could do it again.).
  • Option C: Don’t tear ‘er down (yet)! Do some minor damage control, and defer a major deck project for a couple years.
  • Option D: Do nothing!!

Option D was not an option in our mind. But we were looking for a path of least resistance. So instead, chose the runner up in the least-impact-to-budget-and-time-required category: Option C.

The project seemed daunting at first, but we were lucky enough to enlist the help of my mother-in-law. Without her help & expertise, it would take much longer than a weekend to complete this project.

At the end of it all, the project put us back a few hundred dollars and about 25 hours of labor spilt between three people *(with my contribution being the cheerleader, picture taker and children watcher i.e. not a ton of manpower)*.

Ways We Saved Money Using End-of-Season Sales

Here’s the breakdown of all the deals we cashed in on to save money:

  • DeckOver Paint: $10 off 1-gal or $40 off 5-gal of paint at Home Depot
  • Outdoor Rug: Clearance price at Target end-of-season sale
  • New Chair Cushion Covers: 40% off outdoor fabric at Joann Fabrics
  • New Outdoor Plants: Clearance price at Home Depot end-of-season sales

These deals totaled a couple hundred dollars in savings. Our timing really worked in our favor here, but I’ll be honest – it was mostly a happy accident. A rainy spring season left us no real opportunity to tackle this before the 4th of July anyway.

Prepping the Deck for Paint

Deckover Paint was our cost-effective fix for our tired deck. Sanding down and staining the deck didn’t even enter our list of options because A. the deck was already covered in DeckOver and B. the boards are in pretty poor condition. Check out this close up of one of the worst spots.

deck boards with chipping paint

But the great news is: DeckOver was pretty much MADE for situations like this! So, off we went to prep the boards and cover the existing coat of red-brown DeckOver with a lighter shade of the same product.

The most tedious part of the prep was removing rocks from between the boards. Why were there rocks on the deck? Great question.

We have tiny pebble gravel in our fire pit area, and it has slowly migrated to the deck thanks to two creative kiddos. We spent about three hours using a five-in-one tool to scrape all the rocks out. Some of those suckers were really stuck! New house rule: NO rocks allowed on the deck. Ever. The end.

One thing we did NOT do to prep was power wash the deck. If we were staining or applying a first coat of DeckOver, this would have made sense to do. A clean painting surface is always better for reducing bubbles, bulges and cracks.

But paint was already chipping. We wanted to minimize additional paint chipping. Power washing is, well, powerful, and could produce more paint chipping. Also a point against power washing in our case: we were not planning to sand away every chip or even fix the rotting boards before applying the DeckOver.

(Why? Because we know this deck has to go in a few years, and we didn’t want to invest the extra effort on something that will be torn down. Sad face.)

Painting with Peanut Butter

Painting with DeckOver is like painting with peanut butter – slap it on and smooth it out. To make sure everything was coated evenly, we used regular old paint brushes. Ahhh, look at how much better it looks already:

old deck board half painted with deckover paint

The deck boards took about six hours to paint. The railings took another six hours. The paint dries fairly quickly, and even more so if you paint on a dry, hot day.

Adding the Finishing Touches

Our eight-year-old patio furniture got a facelift, too, with new cushion and pillow covers. We also installed tiki torches to assist with mosquito control. To keep the tiki torches in place, we used a special drill bit to drill holes into the railing. I’m not sure how many mosquitos they will control, but they sure do look cool at night! Here’s how the deck looked once the paint dried. Ta-daaaa!!!

finished deck with deckover paint

Another view we haven’t shown yet is where the deck meets the grass. We have a beautiful mature tree in the middle of our yard. We love it. It’s canopy shades almost our entire yard during the day, which is awesome for the kiddos. However, it sits close to the deck and doesn’t really allow grass to grow very well. Here’s what I mean:

shady spot with no grass growing

Rather than leaving this to harvest mud pits with each rainfall, we opted to cover as much of the dirt as possible with planter boxes an an additional step. I’ll admit, it’s a little tricky deciding what to plant in the new boxes each year. But it definitely beats the mudpit!

deck planter boxes with flowers

Do you have a shady spot in your yard? How do you cover over the dirt and make it look pretty? Tell me in the comments!

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Comments

  1. Debby says

    May 20, 2019 at 1:05 pm

    Loved your blog and we just saw the DeckOver at Home Depot a couple weeks ago. My moms house has a big (16’x20’) deck with steps and she has chosen the color. I like your idea of waiting until mid-July for the paint being on sale. Her deck needs to be sanded because we already powerwashed it. 🙁 Did you sand at all?
    Did you find that a gallon only covered 75-100 sf? Is that how I read the coverage? Or a gallon covers an area of 75-100 sf with two coats. Hmm.
    I love that this product is around. Because yes, we are extending the life of the deck a few years because we don’t want to replace the deck just yet.

    Reply
    • Molly says

      May 21, 2019 at 12:50 am

      Thanks Debby! I do think the paint covers about as much as it says. It’s thick stuff! We did not do a full sand before painting. We only sanded down rough spots where the previous paint was peeling. Good luck with your project! Your mom will be happy 🙂

      Reply
  2. Rose says

    June 3, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    We also had a deck that we re-did with the Deck Over from Home Depot. We were not as fortunate as you. We used a mold remover on the old deck to clean it up a bit. It did not have any loose pieces so we did not sand the deck. Then we applied the deck over. It looked great. One year later and the paint is pealing. When I was blowing off leaves – most of the paint had come off with it (once it started – it was easier to blow most of the paint than sand again. We are now ready to re-do our deck – guessing we will rent a power sander as a starting point and then stain and put a protective coat over it. Not too happy.

    Reply

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Hi! I'm Molly and I'm so glad you are here! I have a passion for all things home, garden, crafts and my biggest DIY journey to date: motherhood! Read More…

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