Here’s the thing about me: I’m really not a “handyman” fix-it type of guy. I am with technology, and most types of electronics, but when it comes to yard work or home maintenance, I really don’t enjoy it, nor am I very experienced at it. So that’s my excuse for the incredibly poor shape the back deck on our house was in as of a few months ago. We’ve been in this house for seven years, and good old Bay West Homes decided that painting our wood was better than staining it – so guess what paint does over time? Yeah, it peels and looks ugly.
If I would have known better, I would have insisted asked that they stain the wood instead. Last year I bought some paint and a brush to attempt to tackle the problem, but I did it too late in the season so I had to wait until this year to start. After the snow thawed this year, the wood on the deck looked 200% worse than it did the previous year – this seemed to be the tipping point for peeling. Wittness the horror…
I was going to sand and paint it, but my father in law recommended a process whereby someone (usually a siding company) wraps the wood in aluminum. It took a few phone calls, and a few poor explanations of what I wanted, before I learned that the process was called “cladding”. I found a Calgary-based company called Edge Xteriors who did the process, and they were fairly affordable compared to the quote I received from another company. Check out how good my deck looked after the cladding process:
I’m kicking myself for not doing it sooner! If you’ve got a peeling paint problem, and want a maintenance-free way of fixing the issue, cladding is your answer. They also did a great job on the rest of our house, including our front pillar:
I can’t believe I let it get that bad…sheesh! That’s what a combination of denial and procrastination gets you. 😉