How to refinish a deck:

My mother came up for the day on Monday. “Day” usually translates into “week”, as she is still here. I don’t mind at all, because my mother is my best friend. However my weekdays are usually spent waitressing lunch at the smokehouse, lounging around all afternoon doing nothing (or maybe shopping), and then class in the evenings. (Insert in there a few chores and some homework now and then.) But when mom is here, she has different plans…aka productive plans.

We were going to refinish my seriously water-damaged-sun-damaged-dry-rotting deck. I have a wood deck that has NEVER been waterproofed. It could be 100 years old. Its falling apart. I do not have the money to replace it, quite yet. But I would never ever have decided to refinish it on my own. The idea of sanding and staining and waterproofing it...aren't you supposed to hire someone for that?

We went to Grossmans bargin outlet, because we had a coupon that said we could spin a wheel and maybe win 50% off our whole cart of stuff. Who can resist spinning a wheel? We picked out the stain for the deck, antique white, because bright white would have looked stupid in front of my used-to-be-white-now-gray house that really needs to be painted. We got hedge clippers and paint brushes, and sand paper, and garbage bags, and a whole bunch of other useless stuff because we wanted to buy enough for it to be worth 50% off should we win that much…I don’t have a hedge.

…its called a bargin outlet for a reason. This time the reason is that the stain was clumpy and old and all of the color was on the bottom. So we shook it, and stirred it….and stirred and stirred and stirred… 20 minutes later it was clumpy and old and all the color was on the bottom. We used it anyway.

Lets just say I am not a handy-man. I don’t like to sweat, and I am not an artist. I have white, waterproof stain, (not paint because that would have washed off to easily) in my hair. I have it in the creases of my elbows. I have it behind my ears. I have it anywhere that ridiculously annoying fly decided to land on my skin. I have stain between my toes….I have showered three times.

I also have really beautiful white spots on my patio stones. My bushes have white leaves, my geraniums are no longer red, the dog has white feet, and the grill is polka dotted, and I have paw prints on my carpet.

…I only spun a 5% discount and I hate painting.