Great Decks Make Great Gardens!
The snow has finally stopped and we are having our first glimpse of sun. For the DIY enthusiast it is time to start thinking ahead: prior planning prevents poor performance! Spring will soon be here and then it will be time to get your garden looking fantastic; nothing is guaranteed to impress visitors, and make neighbours envious, more than a beautiful deck at the head of your garden.
I started to look at redoing my back garden, and actually all of the inspiration came from the shutters that I bought for my conservatory! They were pretty pricey but completely worth it, and now I am looking at building the deck to match them.
Decks can look fantastic if treated well but if left unattended they can quickly begin to look shabby, detracting from the appeal of your garden rather than adding to it. The grooves between decking boards can become a haven for algae and lichen and before long the deck can take on a mossy facade. The other danger with untreated decks is that UV damage from the sun will fade your deck to a tired, silvery-grey colour: this is why decking treatments need to have some pigmentation, to protect the wood in the same way that sun glasses protect your eyes!
Decks are predominantly tanalised when first bought: this is a pressure treatment that gives the deck a slight greenish tinge when new and is designed to offer an initial protection for the first few months. The waxes used in tanalising, however, can make it very hard for any decking treatment to penetrate into, or adhere to, the boards and this is why it is essential to scrub the deck thoroughly with a specialised Decking Cleaner before any treatment is undertaken. The decking cleaner breaks down the waxes and opens up the pores of the timber to make it more receptive to treatments. If a decking cleaner is not used then your treatment will quickly fade or lift away when adverse weather conditions arrive and this is a common yet costly error.
Once the deck has been cleaned then it is ready to treat. There is a bewildering array of decking treatments available for the DIY enthusiast and they each do subtly different things. Please remember that these decking treatments must be used individually, you cannot use one treatment in conjunction with another or they will react with each other and leave your deck looking terrible.
If you want to add a lot of colour to a deck then you need a Decking Stain. This product sits on top of the deck, colouring it rather like a subtle paint but it will flake away over time as it reaches the end of its effective working life.
Decking Oils will also colour the deck, but in more subtle wood colours and will give more of a matt, oiled effect. Whilst Decking Oil gives a very pleasing aesthetic it is not as long lasting as other decking products, often needing re-treament every six months or so.
Decking Protectors will not change the colour as such, although they will darken the wood to which they are applied because of the solvent (oil) content. Decking Protectors themselves have added waxes and so they are most resilient to rainfall.
As a decking expert myself, and an enthusiastic DIYer, I personally use Decking Protector and reapply it every Spring, using a Decking Cleaner every year before the Protector goes down. My deck looks great and if you follow my advice then I’m sure that yours will too!