Deck Refinishing in Herndon, VA

The Herndon Historic District went on the National Register in 1991 with 173 contributing buildings, most of them put up between 1890 and 1920. Walk Station Street or Elden and you are looking at wood porch floors, posts and brackets that have been coated for a century.

Those floors are tongue and groove, laid tight, under a roof. They hold standing water and get walked on daily, and they want a floor-rated product rather than deck stain. The prep is different too. Machine sanding eats the profile off a bead or a bracket and you cannot put it back, so it is hand scraping and spot priming.

If your property falls inside the district, most exterior changes need a Certificate of Appropriateness before work starts, and town staff at 777 Lynn Street will confirm the boundary and what your project needs. We are painters, not your representative before the board. We will not file for you and we will never promise an approval. We will paint to whatever gets approved.

Runnymede Park holds woods and wetland along Sugarland Run, and the ground on that side of town and down the low draws off it does not shed water quickly.

A deck sitting over damp bottomland has its posts and stair stringers standing in ground that is wet weeks after a storm. Post bases rot at grade from the outside in, and a post can look sound at eye level while the bottom four inches have gone. We sound them and probe the stringer bases before quoting a finish, because a stained deck on failed posts is not a deck we want our name on.

Washing on that ground needs thought as well. There is no point flushing several hundred gallons of wash water into a low corner that already holds water. We stage it and route it away from the low side.

Most of these decks are on their third or fourth coat of something, and the history is what dictates the method:

• A solid stain applied years ago. It formed a film on a horizontal surface, and films on horizontal surfaces peel. Once it is peeling across the field, you either strip it or you are recoating solid forever.
• A clear sealer and nothing else. It repelled water and did nothing about ultraviolet light, so the wood has silvered to gray. That is cosmetic, and a clean and brighten brings the tone back.
• Oil put on over an unwashed deck, sealing mildew and dirt underneath it.

Where the existing coating is largely intact we clean, spot-sand the failures and recoat in kind. Where it is going across the whole field we strip, brighten and start again, usually moving to a penetrating semi-transparent that wears thin rather than lifting. Rail tops and walking boards also get sanded for splinters on a deck this age, which is a safety job as much as a finish one.

We are based at 8040 Trevor Place in Vienna and Herndon is toward the outer edge of what we cover, so lead times out there can run a little longer than in Vienna or Tysons. We would rather tell you that up front than string you along. Once we start, we stay until it is finished.

The outdoor season here runs roughly April into November. In the shoulder months we watch the overnight low rather than the daytime high, because a finish that goes on at 60 degrees and drops to 42 by midnight does not cure the way the can says. Dew ends the working day earlier than people expect in spring and autumn.

On a forty-year-old deck there is a point where the surface is not the problem. If the boards are soft across a broad area, or the ledger is pulling away from the house, or the posts have gone at grade, we will say so plainly. Replacing decking on sound framing is often smaller than people fear, and we do carpentry ourselves, so the board work and the finish happen in one visit with one crew. Every new board gets its cut ends sealed before it goes down.

Fredy Vargas walks the deck himself before pricing it. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured, working since 2002. No minimum job. Ten percent off for veterans and for anyone 65 or over. Monday to Friday 8 to 5, weekends by appointment. Call 703-869-0593.