Is your outdoor space in need of a freshening-up but you’re worried that re-staining your deck will take far too much time and effort? Well, no need to worry when you know this little trick. This is the fastest way to stain a deck!
This little trick today comes to you courtesy of Chris, who decided he was going to stain the deck after we finished re-building it. I honestly didn’t even think it was worth staining, because I’ve always thought of deck staining as a really really big job, and I honestly just didn’t think it was worth it. Chris insisted he knew the fastest way to stain a deck and would just “throw a coat of stain on there” and be done with it.
- If you missed the full before and after of this deck, click through to my deck recycling project post to see how run-down this little slice of heaven used to be!
It turns out that he had this trick up his sleeve that made the job so much quicker and easier than any other deck staining project that I’ve seen before.
It’s actually Easy… Really
So when you think of staining a deck, if you’re like me, you think of slaving away for hours in the hot sun, dipping your brush or your rag into the can of stain and then slopping it onto the deck and rubbing it in, square inch by square inch. It’s kind of a painful thought, isn’t it?
Now here’s where the magic happens! Are you with me?
All you need to do, is go to your local hardware store, into the section where they keep the weed killers and bug killers and stuff and find one of these:
It’s just a basic hand-held chemical sprayer! I’ve never seen it used like this before, have you? It’s a little bit brilliant, isn’t it?
No need for fancy and expensive air-compressor powered or electrical sprayers! And when you’re done, just clean it out well and you can use it again for the same purpose, or even in the garden for things like homemade natural weed killer!
The Fastest Way to Stain a Deck
Here’s what you do:
-Wash your deck
-Fill up your sprayer.
-Pump the top a few times to pressurize it
-Spray a large section of your deck (like 3 or 4 whole boards at a time!)
-Give that section a really quick rub down with a rag, just to even things out a bit
That’s it! You won’t believe how fast you can move with this thing!
We used a deck wash and then a waterproofing deck stain for our project and here you can see how well it turned out:
You can have something that looks like this in no time!
OK, maybe “party central” isn’t the best way to describe an evening of Chris and I sitting out back trying to have a conversation while taking turns playing with Jack and talking to Kennedy through the living room window while she’s watching Netflix, but still it’s pretty nice out there. 🙂 And it could be party central if it wanted to be.
If you’ve been putting off a big deck staining project this Summer because of what a big job you think it’s going to be, do yourself a favor and spray it instead!
What you’ll need: Basic Hand-Held Sprayer
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.