The last couple days I have put another coat of stain down on my deck. Specifically, another coat of stain on the base boards. When I totally re-did the deck last autumn, I knew that I really needed to put two coats on the base boards, but after hours of pain-stakingly staining the vertical railing by hand I just didn't want to do it anymore. So, come this summer, the deck started to look really weather-beaten, as it sits in direct sunlight all day, 365 days a year. Also, certain areas with burls and other raised areas got most of the stain wore off of the boards. So, on Monday I cleaned off the deck and on Tuesday I took my can of left over stain and went to town on the boards. And then, with about maybe 3 square feet of boards left to do, I ran out of stain. This was very, very annoying. So today, after work, I picked up another gallon of stain, and after about 20 minutes of work I was done. And I have used maybe 2% of the new gallon of stain. Joy. Obviously, my estimating skills need work, as I was sure that the old can had just enough in it to finish the job.
In the interest of looking at the silver lining on this, I noticed that the handrails also probably need another coat, and now that I have essentially an entire gallon of stain, I should be good to go until two or three years down the road when I will need to completely strip and redo the entire deck. Still, I wanted to do this project for free, rather than having it cost me $30. Ah, well, such is life.
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