Trestle wood

Here we just finished staining the fascia, window frames, pergola, railings and decks on a beautiful house in Ranch place. The homeowners are accelerating the aging process on the siding using a spruce based formula and the results are pretty incredible. The stain we used was a clear weathered exterior Messmer's (22 gallons) and it really spruced up the wood!

The Hispanic landscaping crew brought their microwave every day. That's what I'm talkin about!

3 inch rough sawn spruce deck.

This deck is amazing. Constructed of rough sawn 3 inch spruce, the boards look like reclaimed wood. This deck feels like you are on the deck at Sundance (if you've ever been there) or on the deck of a old rugged ship. Truly beautiful, structurally impenetrable, these decks have a timeless, solid feel that make redwood 2 x 6 feel like little twigs. I would love to be installing this kind of decking and will encourage my clients to consider it if it works with the construction of their house.

I applied a coat of Sikkens Log home coating in the dark oak tint. This product has a sheen to it, and creates a coating on the deck instead of just soaking in. I am curious to see how it will hold up since film forming coatings tend to crack and peel in an exterior setting (see below).

The deck had an interior tinted oil urethane already on it, which is why we went with a similar product but in an exterior grade. We prepped the deck with a scuff sand so the new coating would bond better, followed by pressure washing to remove debri that would interfere with the coating.

Here is the teak deck that we stained the other day. Notice the blue siding on this house. We also stained the entire house last year in a Cabot semi-transparent with a bluish tint on the siding and red trim to tie the deck in. We have gotten lots of compliments and it looks great!

Teak Maintenance

Teak is a very hard wood that is often used for outside furniture and occasionally, giant decks in Park City. This deck is about 1600 square feet (at least 2 of my apartments). Last summer we drum sanded this monster and applied Sikkens SRD using about 80% Teak color and 20% Mahogany. We also ended up staining the entire house, and are staining their neighbor's house this spring.

The thing about hardwood decks is they have a very tight grain and don't allow nearly as much stain to penetrate the wood as redwood. This means they need to be maintained yearly, or even twice a year in Park City to avoid oxidization. This deck has some installation issues as well but we won't get into that here...

We did a 60 grit orbital sand, added about 100 screws to tighten loose boards (note installation issues above), and stained using 100% Teak color Sikkens SRD since the boards had darkened some and the added mahogany was not necessary. No pressure washing since we did not want to add water to this wood before staining and risk more swelling and popping of boards.

Turned out AWESOME!

Before and after orbit sanding

Really pretty grain