How to Refinish a Deck | Sand It or Strip It?

in this video I'm going to be refinishing my porch and showing you how I do it oh without using chemicals let me start at the beginning and take you through my process big thank you to deck for sponsoring this video first let me show you the porch beforehand honestly it isn't in that bad of shape but my reason for refinishing it is I cannot stand the orange color the previous owners picked out I've dealt with it for years but now it's time to refinish it to more of a cedar Brown which is the color I went with when I rebuilt the falling apart staircase since I want to go with a stain and not paint that means I first need to get the orange finish off the most common way to do this is to use a chemical stripper if you're not familiar with the process I'll leave you a link to a friend who did a good job covering how to do it but I personally did not want to use a stripper one I actually did a few test spots on my upper porch to see how good it would work and how much it would take it did a decent job but when using the pressure washer to blast it off it tears up the grain it also uses up a ton of water and with me having such a large area to do it would also be pretty expensive so instead I rented a floor sander from the big box store and decided to try sanding the old finish off I haven't seen this done before so I think it's a little unorthodox but stay with me now these Sanders are intended to refinish indoor floors that are typically nice and flat the problem with an outside deck is these boards are not flat there is some cupping to them Corners are popping up and plenty of nails are popping up as well these all these protruding heads will rip up a belt and a heartbeat so they all need to be flush before coming through with the sander however since I'm not a fan of nails they're always going to pop out like this over time I come through and I pry them up and then I drive in a screw instead then for boards like this that are popping up in certain places one I do try to take out the nails and run in screws but then if I can't I will pre-drill to prevent splitting and then drive in another screw to try to pull the board as flat as possible but if it doesn't work that's another great thing about the sander is that it's going to come through and do a pretty decent job at making the deck back to level next before bringing in the sander I removed all of the railing removing the long stretches was pretty easy as there are just a few toenails going into each post I use the sawzall with a demo blade on it to cut right through each nail and then just kicked it over oh and I'm replacing all the railing with something a little more modern but if that weren't the case then I would have left them intact and needed to use stripper on the railing to remove all of the old finish it's handy to have the railing gone though because now I was ready for sanding and this will allow me to use the big sander to get all the way to the edge you see me pulling my tools from the drawers in my truck bed when working on jobs like this outside of my shop it is very convenient to load my deck drawers with the tools I'll need then just back up my truck to the site and have everything close but organized for this job I loaded in things like a cat's paw flat bar three pound Maul Sawzall drills a sander and of course hearing and eye protection the drawers have plenty of space for an assortment of power tools but can also fit a variety of decked boxes if you need to hold organize smaller items by keeping everything in my deck drawers cleaning up at the end of a job is quick and easy and big thank you to duck for being a supporter of my channel okay on the sanding I am again going with an unorthodox way but hear me out before tackling porch see it's typical to use these Sanders to go with the green direction of the board meaning you would pull the standard this way along the deck however this was the result of two passes doing just that as you can see it removes some of the old finish but a massive amount of chemicals would still be needed to remove the rust over here I turned the machine at a 90 to go perpendicular to the Grain and in one pass it removed almost 95 percent of the Finish looking closer at the green you can see some chatter but in my opinion it looks fine and it isn't nearly as bad as the pressure washer does with the chemical route with this in mind I am tackling the low Report with this method the way the sander works is there is a drum at the bottom that can be raised or lowered by a handle at the top a new belt can easily be slipped on and off whenever you need to replace it I started at one end of the porch and worked my way down you'll see that I had to divide it in half where I started at the machine at the house and pulled it back back until I almost fall off the porch but it's worth noting that I never did I went kind of slow really just watching how much it was taking off or leaving behind to dictate my speed on this side I would raise and lower the drum on every pass so I would get the standard position at the start of a new row and then lower the handle to drop the drum as I started moving the machine backwards once I got to the end of the row I would lift the handle then reposition the standard by moving it to the next row now I personally would overlap my runs by about half or sometimes even a third again I let how much it was removing dictate my choice of course flatter portions of the deck require less overlap it might seem like it goes slow but I threw on some music in my isotunes and I felt like it went really quick one side took me about an hour and a half to complete on the next app though I wanted to try something a little different instead of raising and lowering the handle on each and every pass I left the handle down but made sure to always keep the machine moving just like I would with a belt sander when flattening a countertop which is what I was doing last week this is definitely more taxing on the body because you're dancing with it instead of walking and there is more room for error on gouging your boards if you don't constantly keep it moving around but it did cut the time in half on how long it took me to sand the remaining side so two options to get it done let's see other notes on this part is just make sure to empty the bag every little bit then for the Sandpaper I got the lowest grit possible which is grit 24. oh and make sure to not run over the cord you'll see that I drape it around my neck for easy management if you're curious about pricing this was 68 dollars to rent for the day which I think is super reasonable as you can get a ton done in just a few hours then the added bonus of not easy seeing chemicals and wasting a bunch of water plus since I sanded it it leveled all of high spots out and looked great oh for the areas around the house and was where the sander couldn't get because big old body I just grabbed my three inch belt sander this thing is designed with a flat side just for instances like this where you need to get up flush to something however if you don't have one then using a little bit of chemical stripper on spots is still a win over having to use it on the entire thing Man look how good of a job that did honestly I was so impressed of course there are still some spots remaining but honestly it just does not bother me I think it's little enough to blend right into the stain that will come next however if it did bother you then doing a spot check with the belt sander would work the last part for refinishing is the easiest part it's just throwing down some new stain know that they make these mop looking applicators that make staining a flat surface easy it's just like mopping a floor it only took me about 40 minutes to coat the entire area now my boards are really dried out so after applying this first coat I'll let it dry for about a day or two then come back with a second but just like that I have one more area that is no longer orange truly it is amazing how such a big project like this can be so simple and quick to do if refinishing a porch or a deck has been on your to-do list then I hope that this video is giving you a little bit of insight on the process and maybe some inspiration on how you can tackle glit and an unorthodox away stay tuned because I'm about to turn this area into even cooler of a space so I will see you on whatever I'm working on next [Music] hey Bubba come here oh oh hi I'm almost tired

Channel: April Wilkerson

Views: 113,974

Keywords: refinish a deck, strip a deck, stain a deck, sand a deck, wash a deck, decking, deck boards, deck stripper, deck stain, cost to refinish a deck, square foot, diy, how to, thompsons, deck stain stripper, home depot, lowes, menards, floor sander, restore a deck, can you stain pressure treated wood, cedar deck, wood deck, spray stain a deck, how to use a floor sander

Id: 82xgm6UBxHY

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 23 2022