Refinishing a Redwood Deck
Giving New Life to a Knotless Heart Redwood Deck
Now with the frame in place, it was just a matter of installing the redwood patch on the deck surface. Later, I would complete this refinishing job with some waterproofing and preservative.
First, I applied as much of the old wood as I could to patch up the hole in the deck where the planter had been. I measured this wood before I cut it to allow for gaps along the runs of redwood decking boards that would look right. Since this was fully cured original redwood, it would not shrink any more than the rest of the deck. I used my trusty electric power drill with the battery pack and a Phillips screw drive attachment to install the wood.
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I did not have enough salvage redwood to complete the job, so I had carefully purchased some new 2 by 6 redwood pieces at Home Depot. The era of inexpensive knot free heart redwood is long gone, but if you are careful and selective, you can find a few knotless heart redwood boards in the fork lifted bundles that you can sort through at Home Depot. By the way, I am talking about the “green” or not dried redwood you can find there. The home improvement stores also have kiln dried redwood that is above construction grade, but the prices are astronomical.
So, I took the new redwood boards and cut these two by six inch pieces to fit tightly along the run of the existing redwood planking on my deck. I also centered these new pieces of redwood, which were slightly wider than the planks in the existing deck. The purpose of all of this was to allow for the inevitable shrinkage in both dimensions. To mount these redwood decking planks, I also used my portable electric drill. I predrilled holes with a smaller bit and then I used a countersink so that the galvanized deck screws would not split the wood when drilled flush. I also drilled the middle of all these boards at the 36 inch mark so I could mount them to the new joist that crossed the middle. I was particularly concerned that the new “green” or wet redwood might warp and distort in the sun. While Santa Cruz is at the ocean, the air still can be rather dry and the sun gets hot. It does not take to many warm, sunny Santa Cruz days to take the moisture out of new wood.
Well, now I had a nice new six foot by six foot patch of knotless heart redwood decking just off center in a brown deck that was four to five times larger in both dimensions. It kind of looked like a big square off colored bandage on somebody’s back. But, I was not done and was only half way through my little do-it-yourself home fix up project. Nevertheless, just having that darn planter made a world of difference. Instantly the deck seemed like it was twice as large as before.
The second part of this project was to sand down the deck and to treat it with a water proofing agent rather than covering it with paint or stain to preserve it. The first step was monotonous, but had to be done. I got our my rubber knee pads, a hammer and a broad head nail punch and set about sinking every nail head on that deck by a bit. The only way to remove all that paint was to rent a floor sander from the Home Depot rental department and to sand the whole surface down until all of that retched brown paint was gone. But, first I needed to sink the nail heads in at least a 1/16 to 1/8 inch depth. This was necessary to prevent too much ripping of the floor belt sander sanding belt. Second, it is better not to strip the galvanizing off of the nail heads to prevent rust spots when it rained.
So, I rented a floor belt sander from the Home Depot rental department early one Saturday morning and set about my sanding task. A floor belt sander works relatively fast so you have to be rather careful with it. If you hold it for too long in a particular position or lean on it one way or another you can strip off much more wood that you intend. Once too much wood has been sanded away, there is nothing you can do about it. Frankly, I would never that the nerve to use a belt floor sander on a good interior wood floor. That is a job that is best left to more experienced flooring resurfacing specialists.
But in my case, I figured that I had some room for error with this deck. This wooden deck had several coats of brownish paint and/or stain, which I had to remove. I pretty quickly got the right technique down and removing the paint on the deck took only a few hours. Since I had never used a floor sander or any kind before, I was pretty proud of my work. There were only a couple of places where I got a bit careless and took off more than I would have liked, but they were only obvious to others if I pointed them out.
One of my neighbors had stopped in to see the project after I had finished the sanding and seem little concerned about these minor blemishes and highly impressed with the whole deck renovation process. Since he and his wife had been friends with the previous owner had had been to a few backyard BBQ parties, he was amazed not so much by the removal of the off-center planter. Instead, he was quite taken by the fact that there was a gorgeous and pure redwood deck underneath all that paint.
After I finished the machine floor sanding, I removed the paint around the perimeter next to the walls of the house using a hand held electric belt sander. I did this pretty gingerly, since the kind of problems you can cause with a floor sander and happen just as quickly with a had held belt sander. Finally, I finished the last of the sanding with a rubber sanding block and sometimes with just bare sandpaper and gloves.
When I was finished with all the sanding and I had removed all the tools from the deck, my wife and I stood back to take a look. We knew that the deck had some promise, but we were just amazed. This was an almost 20 foot by 30 foot redwood deck. All of it was pure heart redwood. There was hardly a knot anywhere and that knots that were there were barely visible and barely larger than the diameter of a pencil.
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Go on to Part 4: Redwood Deck Waterproofing >>>>>