Cedar Deck

I told my customer this deck had to be sanded to make it look good. I sanded this deck a few years ago, the finish was baked black by the sun. I used Flood CWF UV5 which is water based. I was able to keep the deck looking ok for a couple years but this year the finish was too far gone. All mottled with mildew too. The finish was intact in most places but getting badly discolored. I've been furious on this job because it's such a pain. I have my own Alto machine, but I had to run around for sandpaper and pads. I started with #36 grit but had to go to #20. The finish wanted to gum up the paper. The 12x18 sander does a good job but it is agonizingly slow. Fixed a few really bad boards, they rot from the endgrain. Whoever built this deck made the spaces too small between boards. I made patches and had to mill some cedar stock to fit. I dug trapped debris out of the spaces with a two sided keyhole saw I put on a stick, took 4 hours
I baked on this job man the heat. I had salt with me I was eating a little once in a while, drank so much water
I just kept at it and the deck eventually gave up its finish.
Got a first coat of sealer on in the evening, a relief.

You earned your money on that job! That's a lot of work. The space between the boards is always a tough guess. Too little & they plug & that's bad, Too wide & you fear a high heal show getting stuck. It seems you need to predict how much the wood might shrink and some does & some seems to grow! All in all, a beautiful job.

Looks real good my young friend.

Here's a few more pix. The guy said, "Do whatever you would do to your own house." I told them, "OK then I'll throw a big party." They will return on the 7th, after this post I'll go over and finish the little staircase on the 4th of July!. Those stringers are pressure treated! Had to patch one and put a base under them. The guy that built the deck just set the stairs on dirt! They love their landscaping and have an irrigation sprinkler system. The sprinklers douse the stairs every night at 3 AM.

I ended up just scuffing the side deck and putting a maintenance coat on it, it's still a little mottled and darker, but should look OK for another year.

Put a 2x4 in a bed of concrete under the dilapidated stringers. I rebuilt the other staircase last year, it gets watered thoroughly every night too.

The landscaper doesn't really care, the irrigation morons were there trying to fix the system a couple days ago; so i just carry on and do the best I can

Dann757 wrote:The guy said, "Do whatever you would do to your own house." I told them, "OK then I'll throw a big party."

Looks beautiful. But the guy didn't REALLY mean to do whatever you would to your own house, otherwise you could have sat in the shade, had a couple of beers and waited for cooler weather.

next time strip the finish before you sand and it will be much easier.

Bk

QUALITY WORK Not everyone has your work ethic If only the folks you work for realized the difference. Oh well you will sleep well tonite with the work you have done well.

Dann757 (and others)

I am at the point where I need to choose what kind of deck board I want to use on my new deck (16x16). I haven't placed the floor joists yet, as I am still weighing some options that would require 12"OC spacing. I am leaning towards using wood as opposed to composite, but am really up in the air between pressure treated pine and cedar. I like that the cedar won't twist and check as much, but it is a softer wood and not as rot resistant as the pine (or so I hear). Who has experience with both of these as decking and what do you think?

That cedar deck you worked on looks amazing btw, which is one of the reasons I am leaning that way.

Thanks,
Joe

JRDepew wrote:Dann757 (and other Who has experience with both of these as decking and what do you think?



Thanks,
Joe

Hi folks, you are right, Dann did another outstanding job. I recently built a 5 x 12 covered screen porch on the side of my home, snow would slide off my metal roof and trap us in if it wasn't removed imediately after the fall,I would have made it larger but only had 5 feet to the driveway. My wood of choice was white cedar 5/4 decking and 5x5 posts, sort of post and beam construction. I used 2x10 p.t. for the ledger, joist, and rim only. P.T. lumber is already saturated there for it doesn't take additional protective coatings as well. White cedar is indiginous to my area and relatively inexpensive compared to red cedar or douglas fur, and is light, easy to work with and takes stain very well. There is shrinkage, significant shrinkage, ( ...I was in the pool!!!.. lol..seinfeld ) I stacked and sticked it for a couple day to rid some moisture and it was fine just use a 6 penny for spacing and it will shrink to 10 penny finish nail for spacing, just my 2 cents, good luck

JRDepew wrote:Dann757 (and others)

I am at the point where I need to choose what kind of deck board I want to use on my new deck (16x16). I haven't placed the floor joists yet, as I am still weighing some options that would require 12"OC spacing. I am leaning towards using wood as opposed to composite, but am really up in the air between pressure treated pine and cedar. I like that the cedar won't twist and check as much, but it is a softer wood and not as rot resistant as the pine (or so I hear). Who has experience with both of these as decking and what do you think?

That cedar deck you worked on looks amazing btw, which is one of the reasons I am leaning that way.

Thanks,
Joe

a lot of sawmills in NYS have access to good black locust and I would use that instead of treated anything. I am installing a locust deck now and just finished a few thousand sq' of 5" t&G black locust flooring. It not only looks great it's extremely hard, doesn't shrink (very low shrinkage and response to humidity and moisture changes, lowest of almost any domestic wood) It doesn't need to be treated to hold up very well for exterior use and it is usually fairly inexpensive/ competative with other flooring decking or other specialty lumber options.

Here's some of my black locust flooring finished with a black stain and 3 coats of fabulon high gloss:

Thanks for the compliments guys, but my work is sporadic. I can be the laziest *uck imaginable. It was good to get some momentum going. I did that deck once before, it was blackened.
Bksaun, thanks, I wish I would have asked you before I just sanded it. Next time it will have to be stripped, I had to take a lot off those 1" x 4's. I don't like making the deck thinner!

Berlin wrote:a lot of sawmills in NYS have access to good black locust

O man locust I've heard about that, sounds awesome!

JRDepew wrote:I am at the point where I need to choose what kind of deck board I want to use on my new deck

I'll tell ya what, Joe; all the time I was working on that deck I was muttering, "I'll NEVER have a cedar deck! Freakin riduculous they were using cedar 1000 years ago, it's obsolete! Etc. Etc

If you want high maintenance and a tremendous look, cedar. Also, cedar is so soft it takes a lot of dings from furniture.
I put composite decking on the deck next door with hidden fastener's. You can go with zero maintenance on that kind of surface if you want to! It was trex or similar, dimensionally stable still,after several years, but it does take a fade. I can power wash that deck once a year and it looks clean and acceptable.
I worked on an Ipe deck once, it had faded from beautiful multicolor natural browns and reds to grey. Man that wood was so hard it took so much labor to clean it up by sanding.

I think pressure treated should be maintained with a sealer, I've seen a lot of pt decks start to cup and sliver after the rain eventually washes out the cca or whatever they treat it with. But once you finish it you get to sit there and watch the finish wear off

Thanks for all of the information everybody. Something has just been rubbing me the wrong way about composite decking, but I did take a liking to azek's pvc deck boards. They do blow the price of wood out of the water though. I will look into locust for decking. I know that locust is huge in my area for fence posts (mostly for livestock fences) and I have a bunch of old locust posts around my property that have been there for years.

michaelanthony, I quoted your post because I saw your location. I am going to be spending a few nights up in millenocket this summer. I will be hiking around baxter state park for a few days, then heading south to spend a few days on block island off of RI.

Thanks again,
Joe

michaelanthony wrote:

JRDepew wrote:Dann757 (and other Who has experience with both of these as decking and what do you think?



Thanks,
Joe

Hi folks, you are right, Dann did another outstanding job. I recently built a 5 x 12 covered screen porch on the side of my home, snow would slide off my metal roof and trap us in if it wasn't removed imediately after the fall,I would have made it larger but only had 5 feet to the driveway. My wood of choice was white cedar 5/4 decking and 5x5 posts, sort of post and beam construction. I used 2x10 p.t. for the ledger, joist, and rim only. P.T. lumber is already saturated there for it doesn't take additional protective coatings as well. White cedar is indiginous to my area and relatively inexpensive compared to red cedar or douglas fur, and is light, easy to work with and takes stain very well. There is shrinkage, significant shrinkage, ( ...I was in the pool!!!.. lol..seinfeld ) I stacked and sticked it for a couple day to rid some moisture and it was fine just use a 6 penny for spacing and it will shrink to 10 penny finish nail for spacing, just my 2 cents, good luck

Guys, quit pattin Dann on the ass so much, you're gonna spoil him. It did come out nice my young friend Words of wisdom from NYS--OUTSTANDING Berlin. That pretty wood/grain

That locust flooring looks outstanding. I have no experience using it for flooring, but my grandfather sure spoke highly of it for fence posts. He used to say a cedar post would only hold a fencing staple if the staple was long enough to be pounded through the post and bent over on the opposite side.