Deck Painting & staining serving Waltham and Metro West MA.

Outdoor floors in this city come in two broad kinds. Single-family detached houses, 37.0% of all units, may have a deck off the back or side. Two- to four-unit buildings, which hold 6,138 units, can instead have stacked back porches and stairs that serve every floor. The finish choice and the scheduling are different for each.

Before any product is picked, the boards need a close look: soft spots, raised nails, loose rail posts and split stair treads are flagged for repair, because coating over rot only seals moisture in.

Single-family backyards

In census tracts like the one covering much of Warrendale, where 80.7% of units are single-family detached and the median home was built in 1954, a deck may be a later addition to a postwar house. It may be pressure-treated pine that has been stained several times, cedar that has weathered gray, or composite that only needs washing.

Pressure-treated wood takes a penetrating oil or semi-transparent stain once it is dry enough to absorb water. Cedar holds a semi-transparent oil stain well and resists rot on its own. If a solid stain was used before and is peeling, the choice is to keep using a solid finish or strip completely to go back to a penetrating one. The paint vs. stain comparison sets out the trade-offs.

• Weathered gray boards: clean, brighten, then semi-transparent stain
• Peeling solid stain: strip, or scrape and stay with solid
• Painted railings with a stained floor: a workable split
• Composite: wash only, unless the maker approves a coating

Stacked porches on multi-family houses

On the South Side, census data for one tract shows 61.1% of units in two- to four-unit buildings and 60.5% built before 1940. A porch on a house of that age may well be painted rather than stained: tongue-and-groove floors, turned or square balusters and lattice under the deck. Those floors take a porch-and-floor enamel over primer, since a stain cannot soak into wood already sealed by paint.

Shared porches need coordination. The top level is finished first so drips fall onto surfaces not yet coated, each household loses use of its porch and stairs for a day or two, and in a condo building the master deed decides whether the porch is a common area paid for by everyone or part of one unit.

Lead on old porch paint

Of all housing units in the city, 69.0% were built in 1979 or earlier. On a pre-1978 house, paid work that disturbs more than 20 square feet of exterior paint falls under the federal lead-safe rule, and scraping a full porch floor with its rails clears that easily. Lead-safe porch work uses ground covers, wet scraping, no dry power sanding without dust collection, and careful cleanup so chips do not end up in the yard.

Our lead-safe painting page has more on how that is handled.

Weather, shade and timing

Horizontal boards take sun, standing water and snow directly, so deck finishes wear faster than siding on the same house. Yards with heavy tree cover stay damp and grow mildew; south-facing decks fade first. A yearly wash and a recoat before bare wood shows are cheaper than stripping a failed finish. Our post on deck stain and New England winters explains how freeze-thaw cycles break down a coating.

Staining needs a few dry days in a row, mild temperatures, and no rain for at least a day after application, which points to late spring through early fall. If the siding is due too, the exterior painting page covers that work, and AJ's deck services page has general details.