How to Prepare, Clean and Paint a Deck with Peeling Paint
Over time, outdoor wood surfaces start giving in to the damaging effects of weather. If you have a wooden deck,you’ll begin to notice discoloration, warping, and weakening of the deck. If your deck was previously painted, you may notice that the paint will start peeling further, exposing your deck to the harsh outdoor weather. Lucky for you, there are some steps that you can take to give your deck a new look and prevent further damage.
Staining and sealing are some of the best ways of restoring an old, beat-up deck. Better still, you can apply a fresh coat of paint on the deck and get the same results. In fact, painting your deck is a great alternative to sealing and staining because it can make incredible differences in your outdoor design. With a good paint product, you can provide a seal for the wood and get an opaque color in place of going translucent. Here are tips on how to prepare, clean, and paint a deck with peeling paint.
Cleaning Your Deck
The deck surface needs to be clean before the application of paint. Sweep the deck thoroughly to remove leaves and other debris. After sweeping, use a pump sprayer or a roller to apply a cleaning solution and give it a few minutes. Scrub thoroughly using a bristle brush and finally rinse the cleaner off the wood with a lot of water. Leave the deck to dry before you proceed with the next steps.
Preparing Your Deck for Painting
Apart from the paint peeling off after some time, painted decks are normally associated with chipping, bubbling, and splitting. You need to take care of all these issues before applying a fresh coat of paint. Was your deck previously treated or was it untreated? All these factors must be taken into consideration before you start painting the deck. Treating new wood facilitates controlled intake and exit of moisture to avoid warping and splitting.
If your deck was hitherto treated with wood oil, your first step should be to remove the remaining wood oil. There are wood oil remover products for that. The preparation process is rather easy if the wood was untreated. All you have to do is to remove other previous coatings, which in this case, is the peeling coat of paint. Use a sandpaper for that. Using a fine grit sandpaper ensures that you pull as much color as you can.
Applying Stripper
Wood stripper is designed to penetrate wood fibers and pull stuff out of it. It’s some sort of paint bleach, but for wood. The point of sanding is to ensure that the stripper does the minimum possible work. Proper sanding significantly reduces the time that the paint stripper sits on the deck surface before you can wipe it off and proceed with painting.
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