Deck Refinishing in Potomac, MD

This is the join most contractors leave alone, and it is the reason a deck job here usually has a second material in it.

A wood or composite deck commonly steps straight down onto a poured concrete or stone pool surround, sometimes with a coated finish already on it. They want completely different products: penetrating stain on the wood, a coating rated for foot traffic, pool chemistry and standing water on the concrete. The transition strip between them gets splash from both sides and goes first.

We handle the concrete side with concrete staining or an epoxy or acrylic deck coating depending on what is already down and how sound it is. If there is a failing coating on the pool deck, that is a stripping and grinding conversation before it is a color conversation, and putting new material over a lifting one wastes both.

The other practical issue is the water. Cleaners and rinse have to run away from the pool, which means covering where we can, working away from the coping and rinsing toward the lawn side. Anything inside the shell, including coping and waterline tile, stays with your pool company.

The deck is often one part of a whole outdoor structure: a covered pavilion with a ceiling and beams, an outdoor kitchen with cabinetry and a bar, a pergola over the lower terrace, a screened porch off the family room.

Covered work is effectively interior-grade finishing that happens outdoors. A pavilion ceiling, exposed beams, tongue and groove soffit and screen frames want a different product and a much better cut line than a deck floor does, and because they are protected from direct weather they last far longer once done properly. We price those separately rather than folding them into one square foot number that flatters the covered area and punishes the open one.

Outdoor kitchen cabinetry is its own thing again. Whatever is out there is taking heat, grease and full sun, so the finish has to be chosen for that rather than borrowed from the deck.

Pergola and pavilion posts also get rubbed by deer in late summer, which takes a post down to bare wood at exactly the height you look at. That band gets spot primed and a coating chosen for abrasion.

The decks that went on with these houses in the 1990s were pressure treated pine, and a lot of that decking has been replaced with composite or PVC over the last twenty years, usually with the original wood railing or wood posts left in place. That gives you one structure with two maintenance answers, and it is worth being straight about which is which.

Composite cannot be stained in the way wood can. It does not absorb, so a penetrating product has nothing to go into. What composite needs is cleaning: a low pressure wash with the right cleaner to lift the surface film, mold in the grain embossing, and the shaded green along a north rail. Chalky oxidation on older first generation composite is a different problem and does not fully reverse.

Where a composite deck runs out to a coated pool surround, people often ask us to make the two match. There are coatings made specifically for composite decking, and they can work, but once a composite board is coated it is a painted surface forever and it needs maintenance like one. We will tell you that plainly before you commit.

Meanwhile the wood railing and posts on the same deck still take stain normally. Matching a stained rail to a manufactured board color takes a sample rather than a guess.

The order of work is clean, assess, then decide. We wash at low pressure with a cleaner given real dwell time, because pressure high enough to clean a soft board is high enough to erode it, and eroded fiber drinks stain unevenly and goes blotchy in a season.

After the wash the deck tells us what it needs. Sometimes a stain and nothing more. Sometimes a full strip and brighten, which is slow and is the honest answer when a film-forming stain has failed and is peeling in sheets. A previously solid-stained deck is a stripping job before it is a refinishing job, and we say so before quoting rather than finding it on day two. Tropical hardwood shows up on some of these decks too, and it takes a hardwood-specific penetrating oil rather than anything film-forming.

On a deck this size the water volume is worth a sentence. If the property runs on a private well we ask about recovery rate and stage the wash across days rather than drawing it down, and we route rinse away from the septic drain field and the reserve field.

A big multi-level deck needs a stretch of settled weather, not a single clear day, because the wood has to dry fully after washing before anything goes on. We plan around that rather than chasing a forecast. On the low, shaded properties toward the canal and Bells Mill, decks hold dew into the morning and we start later there.

If more than about a quarter of your boards have gone soft, refinishing is money spent on a surface problem when you have a material problem. The framing underneath is usually sound, so replacing decking on existing structure is often a smaller job than people expect, and we would rather say that than take a deposit for a deck that looks bad again next summer.

Fredy Vargas walks every deck himself before quoting. The difference between a wash and stain and a full strip and restore is not something anyone can judge from a photograph, and the two are not close in price. Call 703-869-0593.