How (Not) To Refresh Your Outdoor Patio Furniture

So I already alluded to the fact, last week, that we were working on staining our patio furniture.  Oh, how I wish it was just that simple.  You see, had it not been for one fatal flaw I made, fixing up our patio furniture would have only been an afternoon type job.  Instead, it turned into an entire weekend long torture fest.  This is a good time to mention the benefits of having patio furniture made out of real wood - the useful life you can get out of it is incredible when you have the ability to sand it down whenever it begins to show wear.  Metal sets are great too, with a clean coat of spray paint every few years.

This all began as I was looking at our patio table and chairs a few weeks ago.  They hadn't had a fresh coat of sealer in about two years and as cedar ages, it takes on a weathered gray color.

These are the chairs we have that also could use a little sprucing up - see how the finish is coming off the fronts of the chairs.

So I badgered Brent and the fam into going down to the hardware store to get some stain...figuring I would have this project knocked out by evening.   I picked up three products.  

Deck Wash

Brown Stain/Sealer for the Patio Table

      

Turquoise Stain for the Patio Chairs - hint # 1 that this was a bad idea.

      

To get started, clean any dust off of your furniture - I used the air compressor hose to blow all of the debris out of the cracks.

I transferred some of the deck wash into an old plastic container and brushed a coat over the entire table and chair set.

 Using a hose, rinse the product off completely.  No scrubbing required - unless you have some super dirty furniture!

 After the furniture is completely dry, you will likely need to do a little sanding because all of that moisture makes the wood look a little fuzzy.  An orbital sander loaded with 120 grit paper did the trick for us.  Blow the sanding dust off and you're ready to start applying the stain.  This particular product I'm using is a stain and sealer in one, so there won't be any need for a top coat.

 After I was done with the table, I was excited to move onto the chairs and this supposedly awesome blue stain I had picked out.  I don't know what I was expecting when I opened the can, but it wasn't this.  Now would have been a good time to do a test patch to see if I was going to get the results I desired - but....I didn't.  I decided to just throw a coat on the chair and deal with the consequences.  Not good guys....not good.

Crayola hasn't even invented this color.  It ended up being a muted blue brown yellow tone, because the blue stain is considered semi-transparent, it allows the wood grain to show through, except in my case, the chairs were sort of yellow brown from the old sealer which created this obvious disaster.

 Then I hit a stopping point because the following day, this happened:

After the snow melted, I not-surprisingly made mistake number 2.  I decided that maybe the chair just needed a second coat of stain and maybe that would bring out more of the blue and less of the brown/yellow.  At this point, I was either going to be sanding it all down or painting over the top anyways, so might as well just add more stain!  Well, the mossy green only turned a darker shade of mossy green.  As I type this, I'm slapping my forehead because, DUH!!!  Big surprise that it only got darker green.  Dangit!

 The other downside here is that I have an entire gallon of blue stain - I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what kinds of projects I can use it on.  And I can't think of many...not many at all.

Now I had to decide, prime and paint the chairs or sand them down and stain them a different color.  I searched all over Pinterest for some inspiring photos of painted patio furniture but honestly, the only painted chairs I could find were the adirondack style chairs.

I finally decided that there must be a reason people stain outdoor chairs instead of painting them, so with my tail between my legs, I asked Brent if he would help me get them all sanded down.  And as always, with a smile, he said he'd love to.  Luckily, I had only stained one of the chairs green but the others needed to come down to bare wood so the final stain would look even on all of them.

Between the two of us, it look us about 12 labor hours to get 2 chairs, one love seat and two little side tables sanded.  We went through more 80 and 120 grit sandpaper than I could count.

Brent mostly used the orbital sander to get the majority of green stain off while I used a hand sander to get into the tight spots.

After 2 hours of sanding by hand, and complaining the entire time, I realized we had a multi-tool with a sanding attachment.  SAVED MY LIFE!!  It quickly got into all the hard to reach areas (do I sound like a toothbrush commercial?).  Since there were so many nooks and crannies, it still took quite a while to sand but at least the multi-tool made it a little easier on the arms.

After we had gotten as much stain off as we could reach, there were still some areas that needed attention, so we ended up taking apart the chairs to get into those spots.  Finally, ready for stain.  I put a thin, even coat on the chairs using the same product I had used on the patio table using a natural bristle brush.

 Here's a side by side - the one on the right has a fresh coat of stain.

And two weeks later, it was nice enough out to take some pictures!

 And finally, the best feature of our home are these double french doors from our dining room out to the patio.  We have these doors open as much as possible when the weather and humidity cooperate.

So refinishing our patio furniture wasn't difficult, just a big time and labor commitment.  Hard to believe that square patio table is 8 years old, built by my dad for Brent and I's one year wedding anniversary.  With the fresh coat of stain and sealer, it looks brand new.

The moral of this story is to be careful with your wood furniture.  If you feel like taking a risk and choosing a colored stain, try it in an inconspicuous spot FIRST before diving in.  Hopefully I can save someone from making the mistake I did and the hours and hours it took to correct it!

Role Reversal

So I had to chuckle to myself the other night.  Snow had melted (don't worry, we got more after these pictures) and it had left us with a lawn littered with debris.  Turns out we didn't do as thorough of a job as we should have last fall when the leaves were falling.  There were piles of leaves in our boulevard and the flower beds were covered in leaves, over a foot deep in some spots.  Christmas lights were still dangling from the eaves.  And yes, if you look closely, that is an owl wearing a Santa hat on our front door.  The turquoise Christmas tree is still standing strong, too.

 Seriously, our house had the exact opposite of "curb appeal" - I'm thinking it would have been more accurately dubbed "gutter appeal."  Time to clean 'er up.  Or take photos while Brent gets it cleaned up!  Kidding, I put the camera down to help a little bit.  Thankfully, the kids are great helpers and love chipping in.

 And since we couldn't find any of Owen's shorts from last summer, Brent made him some.  I'm still trying to convince him to bring the length up a little bit.  Think...Davey Dukes.

 Turns out, after we raked up the garbage, there was actually green plant material beneath!

 Wow - kind of hard to tell, but this next photo is actually the "after."  Looks like we still have a little work to do.

 Then I was looking at my flower boxes, thinking they could really use a new coat of paint.

 I used my orbital sander (kind of my new best friend after that disaster of a project I call patio furniture refinishing) to sand off all the flaking paint.

 A few things to note here:  1.  That is a paint brush in my back pocket and I honestly don't even know why it's there.  Kind of looks like a rabbit tail though.  2.  Do not zoom in on my shapely legs, those babies haven't seen the sun or a razor since last October.  Only halfway kidding about the razor part.

 And then this is about the time that I started laughing to myself, because as I was outside in the yard, busting my hump, Brent was inside making dinner for the fam while simultaneously doing yoga.  Hence the role reversal.  I love him even more for it though.  You can't blame a man for wanting healthy, flexible joints!

 Had to hand sand to get into the grooves.

 Once sanding was complete, I used the same primer I use for every project to give the flower boxes a good base so the topcoat of paint would adhere well.

 After priming, there were still lots of little gaps where the wood had shrunk and moved with age.  Hmmmm...a lot like humans.

 I filled all the gaps with the caulk gun while Brent followed behind me and smoothed the caulk out.  Don't worry, his yoga session was complete.  He was cussing like a sailor as he followed me though because apparently I was using wayyyy too much caulk and it was making it difficult for him to smooth it out.

 After the caulk dried, I put two coats of our white exterior semi-gloss trim paint over top.  This shouldn't be a shocker, but flower boxes get hit with a lot of water, since the plants within need water ever 1-3 days.  So I'm not surprised that they need to be sanded and repainted every few years.

 Well there, that's looking a little better!

These small scale projects are what we tend to work on during the weekdays after work.  Not too time consuming and can be complete in a few hours.  We save the weekends for bigger, more substantial stuff...and we can't wait to share with you what we have been building for the last two weekends!!

Now we just have to sit back and wait until about mid-May, which is when we can actually plant stuff in them!