Deck Painting & staining in Ayer, MA.

A deck finish lives a harder life than house paint. The boards lie flat, so rain and snowmelt sit on them; the top faces take direct sun; and shoes grind grit into the stair treads every day. Those conditions wear a deck finish down faster than the siding beside it.

Detached single-family houses account for about 51.1% of housing units in town, with attached single-family units adding another 10.4%. On a detached home the owner decides on color and product freely. On a townhouse or attached unit, a deck may share a line of sight or a railing with the neighbor, and association rules on colors are worth reading first.

Decks near the ponds and the river

Long, Sandy and Spectacle Ponds are state-designated great ponds, and the 2006 Freedom's Way reconnaissance report notes that private residences occupy most of their shorelines. The Nashua River also runs through town along MacPherson Road. A deck facing the water or tucked under trees stays damp longer after each rain, and that is where mildew, algae and soft boards show up first.

For a shaded or waterside deck, a cleaner with a mildewcide, a stain that carries its own mildew inhibitor, and careful attention to board ends and the joints over joists make the biggest difference. Leaves and pine needles left between boards hold water against the wood all season, so keeping gaps clear is part of making the finish last.

Picking a coating for the wood you have

Semi-transparent stains soak in and fade gradually, so the next round is mostly washing and recoating. Solid stains and floor paints build a surface film that hides more and blocks more sun, but when it wears through it flakes, and the flakes must be scraped before recoating. The paint vs. stain comparison goes deeper on the choice.

• Pressure-treated pine: allow it to dry out before the first coat; if a few drops of water soak in rather than bead, it is ready
• Cedar or redwood: suited to penetrating oil or semi-transparent stain; light solid colors may need a tannin-blocking primer
• Composite or PVC: usually cleaned, not coated, unless the board maker approves a product
• Wood already painted or solid-stained: only another film-forming coat will go over it, unless it is stripped to bare wood

Porches on the Victorian and Revival houses

North of the center, the Pleasant Street and Washington Street area has late 19th and early 20th century wood-frame houses in Queen Anne, Shingle and Colonial Revival styles, according to the reconnaissance report, and the side streets include some multi-family houses. Covered porches on houses like these may have painted tongue-and-groove floors and painted rails, and stacked porches on two- and three-family buildings add more floors and stairs to the same job.

Porch floors on pre-1978 houses can carry lead paint in the older layers. Roughly 53.9% of local housing units were built before 1980. Testing comes before scraping, and if lead is found, exterior work over 20 square feet follows EPA lead-safe practices, described on the lead-safe painting page.

Prep and timing

A good coat on a poorly prepared deck will still fail early. The sequence is a cleaner to lift graying and mildew, a thorough rinse, a brightener to neutralize the cleaner, light sanding of raised grain, and enough dry days for the moisture to leave the boards. Loose nails get reset or replaced with screws, and soft boards at the stairs, ledger and post bases get replaced first.

Stain needs dry wood and no rain through its cure time, and most products list a minimum temperature. That puts most deck work between late spring and early fall. The deck stain and New England winter article explains what cold and snow do to a finish.