A deck stripped back and refinished

The old coating had gone through on the treads and the step edges, which is where a deck always goes first: those are the boards that take every footfall and the most standing water. The rest of the surface still had colour in it, and that unevenness is the thing that makes a deck look worse than it is.

We take a deck in that state back to bare timber before anything goes on it, because a new coat over a failing one fails on the same schedule as the coat underneath. Once the boards are clean and dry we run the finish across the deck, the steps and the built-in bench together, so the whole structure reads as one thing.