Deck Painting & staining throughout Framingham, MA.

Decks take more abuse than any other painted or stained surface on a house. Horizontal boards hold snow and standing water, get full afternoon sun, and are walked on all summer. A finish that holds up for years on vertical siding wears out far sooner on a deck floor, so the goal is a coating you can maintain, not one that looks perfect for a month and then peels.

Just over half of the city's housing units are single-family detached homes, and for those owners the deck or porch is theirs alone to maintain, with no association schedule to wait for. The work below is about getting those surfaces to hold a finish through a New England winter.

Know what your deck is built from

Identifying the wood and the current finish decides everything else. Solid stain over a deck that was previously treated with a penetrating oil will not stick; a clear sealer over a deck that was painted is pointless. We check what is on there before we recommend anything.

• Pressure-treated pine: the most common deck lumber; new boards need time to dry before they will absorb stain
• Cedar or redwood: naturally rot-resistant but prone to graying and tannin bleed; penetrating oil stains suit it well
• Composite or PVC boards: usually not stained; cleaning is the main maintenance unless the maker approves a coating
• Older painted porch floors: common on early-1900s houses, and best kept painted with a porch-and-floor enamel

Shade, water and the age of the yard

The city takes in the Sudbury River and its marshes, Farm Pond, Lake Cochituate and several old reservoirs, and some properties back onto that water or onto wooded land. Decks in shaded, damp spots grow mildew and algae quickly and need a stain with a mildewcide and a thorough cleaning every season. Decks in open, south-facing yards face the opposite problem: UV breaks down clear and lightly tinted finishes fast, so a more pigmented semi-transparent or solid stain lasts longer.

The postwar subdivisions north of Route 9 have had more than sixty years for yard trees to grow, so a deck that once sat in full sun may now spend part of the day in shade. That is worth considering when choosing a stain color and opacity. Homes built since 2010, about 8.5% of the housing stock, may have decks still on their first or second coat of stain.

How we prepare and finish a deck

We start by walking the deck for soft boards, popped nails or screws and loose railings. Paint and stain do not fix structural problems, and we will tell you if a board or post needs a carpenter before we coat it.

Then comes cleaning with a deck cleaner, and stripping where an old film-forming finish is peeling. A brightener follows on stripped wood to restore its pH and color. Once the boards are dry, we sand raised grain and fuzzy areas, coat the railings and vertical parts first, and finish the floor boards in long runs so lap marks do not show.

Porches on older houses

Houses from before the Second World War, such as the Colonial Revival, Dutch Colonial and bungalow blocks in South Framingham, may have covered front porches with tongue-and-groove floors, turned posts and painted railings. Those are painted surfaces, not stained ones, and the old paint layers may contain lead. Scraping them calls for the precautions described on our lead-safe painting page. For porch detail on the house itself, see our exterior painting page.