Deck Refinishing in Falls Church, VA

You have watched this happen on your own street. A 1954 rambler comes down and a six-bedroom house goes up on the same parcel, with a big footprint and only a few feet to the neighbor's fence or a mature oak.

That is an access problem before it is a refinishing problem. Washing gear, a compressor, staging for a raised deck and a run of replacement boards all have to get to the back garden, and on some of these lots the only route is through the house or over a fence. We would rather work that out at the estimate than turn up with equipment that will not fit down the side.

Runoff is the other part. On a tight parcel, wash water off a deck goes straight at a neighbor's foundation or window well unless it is directed somewhere. We look at where the ground falls before we start and we control it. Nobody wants their deck to be the reason the house next door has a wet basement wall.

Those infill builds come with new decks, and people want them stained the first summer. Usually they should not be.

Fresh pressure-treated lumber is still wet with treatment chemicals and has to dry through before it will take anything, which depending on the season runs into months. New boards also carry mill glaze, the burnished surface left by the planer, and it repels finish. That is why a brand new deck stained too early looks blotchy by autumn.

We test the boards rather than guessing. If they are not ready we say so and give you a month to call back. If they are ready, the glaze gets sanded or chemically opened first. And if the builder put composite down, we will clean it and we will not sell you a finish for it, because composite is not meant to be stained.

Between the mature oaks through Broadmont, the woods at Cherry Hill Park and the shaded corridor along the W&OD Trail, a lot of decks here sit under leaf fall for two months of the year.

Wet oak leaves left on boards leach tannin and print dark patches into the wood in the shape of the leaf. Around fasteners you get the other kind of black, tannin reacting with metal, which cleans up partially and does not always come out completely. We say that in advance rather than let you expect a uniform board.

On a north-facing deck under that canopy we will often recommend a semi-solid with more pigment and a shorter cycle rather than pretending a five-year product lasts five years under a tree. More pigment blocks more ultraviolet, and it hides more grain. That is the trade and it is the same every time.

Almost everything in the established parts of Falls Church was built before 1978, and on the older Capes in Broadmont and the porches on Virginia Forest and Greenway Downs, the rails and balustrades have been painted for decades.

Old coatings deserve care. We do not dry-sand or power-grind aged paint on these houses. We wash, scrape wet, keep the debris contained and cleaned up, and prime bare wood the same day it is exposed.

Rails are worth separating from the walking surface in the quote anyway. Vertical surfaces shed water and take no foot traffic, so they last far longer. It is normal to refinish the deck floor twice for every time the rails need attention, and we will tell you when yours do not need doing.

Fredy Vargas comes out and walks it. He checks the clearance underneath, sounds the posts and the ledger, looks at what finish is on there and how it is failing, and tells you what the wood is. Plenty of people inherited a deck from a previous owner and were never told whether it is pine, cedar or Brazilian hardwood. If it is Ipe or Cumaru, mention it when you call, because that is different work and a different product.

Four of us, same crew from the first morning to the last. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, bonded and insured, working since 2002. No minimum job, so one landing and a set of stairs is real work to us. Ten percent off for veterans and for anyone 65 or over. We are on Trevor Place in Vienna, about fifteen minutes up Route 7. Call 703-869-0593.