Deck or patio??
- Thread starter cyadict
- Start date
I like the deck better. The wood is just easier on bare feet than the concrete. The only advantage that I can see for the concrete patio is that you can have a turkey fryer on there.
Both these are correct, if you use the proper stain and actually keep up on a maintenance schedule the will be easy to maintain and stay looking great. Most people don't do this though, they either paint or use a solid stain on the wood, or don't do it every other year.
Once you put paint on a deck there is really no going back, by that point it is almost cheaper to just replace the deck boards.
I went the solid stain route and it was a complete nightmare. I ended up hating the color and the only way to get it back to original was sanding the whole deck by hand. That was a nightmare that I will never go through again.
Precisely why I went with the composite. Plus...staining those 1x1's is just brutal.
I use a semi-solid stain. I felt like the label on the stain can misled me, it was not supposed to be as solid as it turned out. I realized soon after applying it that I was never going back (at least not without a lot of elbow grease). It looks nice, but I wouldn't recommend that route to anyone for that simple reason.
I agree. This is one of the reasons that we went with the metal spindles on our new deck. More expensive but I like the looks of it better and it will be much easier to stain.
We had a similar issue on a deck at a previous house where the builder didnt know the codes so he placed the original spindles 6 inches apart. I think the code is that they can be no more than 4 inches apart so instead of starting over he just put a spidle in between all of the ones spaced at six inches which meant that ther were nearly twice as many as needed and they were extremely close together. It took forever to stain.
I would think masking all of those metal spindles so you don't get stain on them would be a nightmare or are you able to just wipe any stain off of them?
I use a sprayer when I apply stain, I would never do it by hand, except close to the house. With your composite deck if you have it professionally cleaned every 2 years it will clean very easily. If you want to do it yourself I would do like brianhos posted and use a mild soap and water on it once every 3 months or so. If you let it go more than 2 years it will be pricey to clean.
When we maintain the decks we service. We do horizontals every 2 years and the verticals every 4. When year 10 comes around it is time to take it down to bear wood and start the cycle over again
I have a titan 440i airless sprayer very versatile to use for both painting or staining, though it won't work on all stains.