deck – BIG

We replaced our old deck boards with new pressure-treated boards. It’s nice that they are a pleasant shade of light brown. How do I keep them close to the same colour? The contractor who built the deck said I should wait one year before doing anything. One year is up this fall. I don’t want the deck to turn grey. Should I put some type of sealer on it this summer? Will that keep the deck the same colour? Or, should I wait longer, and use a sienna brown stain? I recognize that I may have to do the sealer or stain every few years.—Gerry Bleau, via email

May have to? You probably will have to. Deciding to stain a deck is like deciding to adopt an African grey parrot: “Once you start, it is a lifelong commitment,” says Wayne Lennox, Cottage Life’s project builder. “I’m not a big fan of treating a deck with anything.” But it’s your deck. If brown is what you want, brown is what you shall have.

Lennox suggests avoiding a sealer. “They potentially seal moisture in as well as keep it out, possibly leading to mould. I would go with the stain.”

While you can slow weathering by using a semi-transparent stain, or a water repellent with added toner, “in general, you need colour in the product to protect the wood surface against UV damage and fading,” says Jana Proctor of Timber Specialties, a company that makes wood preservation and protection products. “If you like the original colour of the brown pressure-treated wood, choose a colour similar to it.” Try the product in a hard-to-notice test area first to make sure you like the look.

Great, you’re all set. But why did the contractor tell you to wait 12 months?

“More than 20 years ago, pressure-treated wood in Canada had a water repellent added to it at the factory level,” says Proctor. “You had to wait for that to wear off, usually for about a year, before you could apply something else,” she says. “But that hasn’t been done in so long, you’d think that information would have gone away by now.”

How to treat a slippery deck

All our experts agreed that you’ve held off long enough. “You don’t need to wait a full calendar year,” says Marshall Black, a cottage, deck, and dock builder in McKellar, Ont. You do, however, need to make sure that the wood is completely dry. “You wouldn’t want to apply anything, say, after a night of rain.”

Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.

The article was originally published in the August 2022 issue of Cottage Life.

Is rot setting in on your deck boards? Replacing the lumber you walk on is usually an easy repair. You can even upgrade wood to low-maintenance composite lumber if you’re tired of refinishing your deck. But a new deck surface won’t last long unless you check and repair the substructure at the same time.

Remove a few old boards from the edge of the deck to be sure that the existing substructure will be safe and reliable if you reuse it. If you used deck screws, you may be able to unscrew them, but chances are debris and corrosion will frustrate your efforts. Instead, use a reciprocating saw with a hacksaw blade to slice through screws or nails at the joint line between deck boards and the underlying frame. It’s a lot easier than smashing and bashing, and it will leave you with decent scrap lumber you can use for those odd projects around the cottage.

How does the underlying wood frame look?

Poke the joists with a screwdriver to test for strength, especially along their top edges. Is the wood firm or punky? With the floor frame partially open and visible, are there any other areas of rot? Don’t trust your eyes, but poke here and there to make sure all is solid. Sometimes thoroughly rotten wood can look surprisingly good superficially—until your screwdriver sinks in. The ends of joists, beams, and posts are most likely to develop rot because water wicks into end grain in these parts more than other places. Also, pay particular attention to any parts of the deck frame with large areas of moisture-trapping wood-to-wood contact.

Small, isolated areas of rot no larger than a toonie are usually okay, but when rot sets in, it’s typically over a large enough area that you’ll need to replace some frame parts. Luckily, once the deck boards are removed, it’s not difficult to install some new joists. Now the deck is ready for new boards on top.

This article was originally published in the May 2022 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

How to prevent rot and adjust joists.

Don’t have a deck to repair? Get some inspiration for your next build.

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