Posts Tagged "backyard blitz"

backyard blitz, cont’d

Posted by Sharon Pakir on Feb 19, 2011 in Home & Decor | 2 comments

Well, it’s been a busy couple of months here at casa de backyard blitz. I mean, we embarked, just before Christmas last year, on backyard blitz: the deck parts 1, 2, and 3. We gave an old, tired outdoor furniture setting a bit of a makeover. And in the proceeding weeks, it’s been quiet blogwise, but let me assure you, we’ve been hard at work on the next phase of operation improve-backyard.

To start with, this is what the backyard beyond-the-deck looked like. Even without the clutter that got a bit wild (from the other projects going on), everything was a bit of a garish mashup colour-wise. The pergola was still just raw wood beams, and the whole area was a little dark and well, decidedly NOT airy. The area had so much potential, especially for entertaining, but seemed a bit closed in.

This was the view of the same area, from the side of the house and deck.

First up, I figured the colours needed work. That bright orange wall cast a weird glow inside the pergola, and frankly, I prefer my landscapes to feature colours that are a bit more nature-inspired! So off we went to Bunnings to find some colour matches. We decided to stick with Wattyl, given our good experiences with it, and chose the colour “Hessian”. See how we got all matchy matchy with the colours we chose for the deck?

Of course, as usual, we started with prepping everything. We used our handy high pressure water cleaner, and blasted the walls. Shock and horror ensued, when we saw HOW MUCH DIRT came off.

The walls got so clean we even toyed with the idea of NOT painting them, but by this stage, we were pretty committed.

Then S poly-filled the crap out of every crack, hole, and uneven bit out of the wall, and the hedge box along the side pathway.

And then the painting began! <Insert gratuitous photo of handsome painting man>

Here’s an idea of how different the colour we chose was. Doesn’t seem huge, but we went from a brightish yellow to a muted earthy colour.

And then, we got started on that orange wall. Oh man, I was excited about THAT! Almost as soon as S started painting it, a huge sense of relief flooded over me. My eyes no longer were hit with the glare of the entire sun as soon as I stepped outside, and my eyeballs no longer had to be sore from its garishness. Hyperbole? Maybe. Whatever.

This was a huge job, and 3 coats and very porous wall = took a couple of weekends and many nights after long days of work, to get to THIS wonderful result!

We were mighty pleased – amazing what a lick of paint can do to improve a space dramatically! Next, we got started on the pergola. Note: I use the term “we” pretty loosely because this was pretty much all S, and me standing around cheering him on with pompoms.

He started with polyfilling all the cracks in the wood.

Actually, one of the most gorgeous things about watching S work in the yard is that he actually smiles whilst he works. Seriously. This shot isn’t posed – he didn’t even know I was taking it! And those rays of sunshine behind him? IT’S AN ANGEL HALO. I SWEAR.

And then my magical man sanded it all down to make it smooth and nice to touch.

Yup, HAND-sanded. *swoon*

Yes, in his moccasins. Who am I to argue with comfortable workwear?

Next step – priming the whole damn thing. This was near as painful as when we were priming the raw wood beams of the deck, and it kept drinking the paint, but not AS painful because there wasn’t any careful edging off to do. It was “get happy with a paintbrush and slap it on”, as far as technique went.

Here’s how it looked primed. You can already see the VAST improvement it makes over raw wood.

Then we got serious with Mr Pergola, and started slapping the Hessian paint onto it.

This photo was shot around coat number 2. Look at the broken pot plant. S had a bit of a nasty accident with falling off the ladder, and smashed the entire pot and also hurt his foot. And then, the darling man KEPT PAINTING. Sometimes I wonder how me (Ms Injury) could have found Mr Made Of Steel.

So folks, after what seemed like eternity (3-4 weeks) of painting, talking about painting, washing paint gear, clearing paint gear, more painting, and then some, here’s the end result!

Oh wait. Wrong picture. (This was actually what I found one day lying on our kitchen floor, in between coats, worn out from the end NOT BEING NEAR AT ALL).

So, take 2.

HERE’S the end result!

Reminder of the before picture:

And TA-DA!!!

It’s still a bit messy, I know, and we haven’t staged the area for USE just yet, but it’s already a huge improvement. We are trying to decide if we want to pop the barbeque and the outdoor setting in there since it’s so nice, and we need to tackle putting a ROOF on the area to make it a great lounge space.

Having a few vestibules of other ongoing projects lying around doesn’t take away from the joy though that firstly, it’s OVER, and secondly, IT LOOKS AWESOME! I can’t wait to show you more pictures of its completion, and how we decide to use the space!

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backyard blitz: the deck, part 3

Posted by Sharon Pakir on Jan 2, 2011 in Home & Decor | 3 comments

So to recap, in the deck: part 1, we prepped and painted all the surrounding and ceiling beams in the outside decking area. In the deck: part 2, we prepped the deck itself for painting, by stripping the wood down and sanding it! And now, after a full day and night of letting the deck dry fully and have a bit of a rest, we attacked it with paint.

To recap, we left the deck looking like this:

But the next day, I woke up and found this!

S had woken up early, and whacked a coat of primer on the entire deck before he went to work! WHAT A CHAMP!! This enabled us to speed up the whole process hugely – with 1 coat of 4 down before I’d even started my day!

Now, most decking paints are self-priming, including the one we used (Wattyl Decking Paint), so technically we didn’t need to prime it. However, the deck had been oiled previously, and wood absorbs oil. Apparently, the oil could come back up to the surface of the wood, and warp/bubble/spoil our paint job. Whilst I was slightly skeptical, we decided to go with priming anyway to put a layer of seal between the paint and the oil.

We bought a can of Dulux 1 Step Sealer/Primer/Undercoat, and this seemed to give a really nice base for painting on. S said it was pretty hard to get on as the ridges in the deck were a bit annoying, and the stripped timer again, drank the paint thirstily.

Here’s a close-up of the primed deck. Very uneven, but that’s ok, primer coats usually are.

As I drank my morning coffee, standing in the doorway leading to the deck, I gazed upon the primed deck and my heart swelled with love and pride at my strong man who woke up at 6am to prime it before going to work. Wow. What a guy. And then people, the caffeine shot through my veins and crazy lady started thinking TOO much. “Ah, maybe it would be nice if HE came home and got surprised at the first coat already being painted!”

True idiocy.

So like a little moron, I happily gathered my painting things and opened the new tin of paint. I was filled with SUCH good intentions that I didn’t fully think about how “painting entire deck by myself” and “stupid spine injury” didn’t really go hand in hand.

I started at the corners, and with my little roller and on hands and knees (the big roller is too heavy for me), off I went. I don’t have any photos of ME painting because it is kind of physically impossible to do. You’ll just have to imagine me huffing and puffing, and HANDS AND KNEES, doing it square foot by square foot. About halfway through, I realised the folly of ME trying to do the whole damn thing myself. You know, fatigue and pain, my 2 most annoying friends, had visited.

I called a couple of friends for distraction and support, and through some good ol’ girly gossip, managed to get about 2/3 way through. I couldn’t stop because I didn’t want an uneven finish. And you know, my pride and ego (if S can do it, so can I goddamit). Still, even 2/3 of way through and no more girlfriends to call to talk me through it, those planks were mocking me even as I painted them. *shakes fist*. It wasn’t the combination of the heat, pain, and tiredness, IT WAS THE PLANKS.

Suddenly another girlfriend called me. AND gave me some very annoying news. And this news people? THIS brought on the anger, which brought on the adrenaline, which brought on the second wind, and rollered my little heart out. in another 30 minutes, I HAD FINISHED THE DECK!!! Well, the first coat anyway.

(cue applause and angel choir music)

S was PRETTY amazed when he got home, though between you and me, he could’ve been all OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT YOURSELF LET ME BUY YOU SOME DIAMONDS. But oh well. I think I’ll live. *sniff*

The only problem, that we could only see once it dried, is the cracks in the deck. We just COULD NOT get the paint into them.

So instead of GLEEFULLY slapping on coat number 2 that afternoon, we had to instead crawl about on our hands and knees for over an hour, doing this with little paintbrushes:

Yup, to every single line between every single decking plank, on a 30 square metre deck, inching along with itty bitty paintbrushes. We were…. yeah. Had to keep each other entertained whilst we did it. Let’s just say it was pretty arduous, but we were determined to do a good job of it.

MUCH better after doing it though, results were immediate:

Finally, we started on coat number 2. And when I saw how quickly S got through it with his giant roller, I nearly cried.

I scurried around doing the edges with a paintbrush and making sure all the lines were filled in as he did this (found a few that we’d missed earlier).

After the 2nd coat, even when it wasn’t totally dry, we could see that it was still going to be a bit patchy. SO we decided to do a 3rd coat. (I called the Wattyl helpline number on the can and they were incredibly helpful, and said this wouldn’t hurt it.)

On the first 2 coats, we tried to strive for good coverage, but on the 3rd coat, we went with as smooth and even strokes as we could. S layered the paint on, and I played “inspector”, pointing out sections he had to smooth out more or add more paint to (the glare from the sun made it difficult for him to see).

And it totally worked! Ladies and gentlemen, check THIS out:

So that’s how we went from this deck:

to this one:

With about a week of work, lots of visits to Bunnings (where I drove them crazy with stupid questions), plenty of paint, and 2 people who were dedicated to the project! We’ve been exhausted, but it’s been so gratifying to see it come together, especially since we’re totally new to this! (AND completely addicted…)

This isn’t all folks – we’ve been doing other Backyard Blitz and inside the house projects as well, and will be blogging them very soon!

Materials used:

27cm Roller + long broom handle that screwed onto it

Small roller for edges

Few paintbrushes

Wattle Decking Paint in Woodland Grey for the deck, Creamy Natural for the beams

Dulux 1 step primer

You can read about how we prepped the deck for painting here.

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backyard blitz: the deck, part 2

Posted by Sharon Pakir on Jan 2, 2011 in Home & Decor | 2 comments

Well. After backyard blitz: the deck, part 1 wherein we painted ALL the beams above the deck, it was time to prep the actual decking itself for painting. If you looked at the picture below, it’d look like the deck was still all pretty and deeply oiled and not in need of a redo.

BUT, the edges and stairs of the deck scream for help:

Every time it rained, the plague-like wearing down of the deck crept inwards, and this was in just 2 short months we’ve lived here, so we decided to do something about it.

We chose painting it over oiling it for several reasons – from the research I did on the vast internets, it turned out oiling lasts 12-18 months, and painting can last 3-6 years. I know what I’D rather be doing every summer other than re-oiling that damn deck. (Ok, I don’t KNOW but you get the idea). Paint meant we could match the deck to the house (and you KNOW I’m all about the pretty pretty matchy matchy), and paint seemed a lot harder to mess up. Both painting and oiling require the same kind/amount of prep, and with paint, you can cover up your mistakes. Off we went, looking for advice on painting the deck.

The problem is, because of our mild-ish weather here in Australia, it turns out MOST people oil their decks. Even those that live by the sea with the harsh salt water and sun. Oiling was the way to go, lots of people gravely assured me, indeed, many had never heard of painting the deck before (and clearly thought I was crazy). My favourite was a male friend who knows of my lack of DIY skill (but didn’t realise my great www research skills) who gently told me, with the air of someone telling a child that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, “No no NO, Sharon, you’re mistaken. Decks don’t get painted. Decks get oiled. You’re PRETTY!”

Usually, inserting that last sentence would’ve been deterrent enough for me to try something I’d never done before, but this time, I was determined. I’d researched this, y’all, and I was going to do it the way thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands of Americans did it.

As with all kinds of finishing work, prepping and priming is the bulk of the job. We got a lot of conflicting advice about how to strip the wood to prep it for painting – paint specialists who flat out told us you couldn’t paint over wood, people who suggested getting a floor sander (those big lawnmower types) to grind the crap out of it, and yet others who assured us just slapping the paint on after a rinse with a high pressure water cleaner would do the job.

What we ended up doing was an amalgamation of all the simplest methods we got advised, put together to create an arsenal of stripping that wood. It seemed to work great. So here it is, The Deck Part 2, wherein we strip that baby down. This post is dedicated to all you other Aussies who desperately want to paint your deck but keep getting told it can’t be done. HA.

(note: I’m sorry about the crappy photo quality and our horrendous outfits. we don’t exactly walk around with a DSLR in our designer clothes to paint and sand!)

We armed ourselves with a cleaning/stripping duo of detergents first of all:

And we invested in… a Karcher high pressure water cleaner. HELLO, GORGEOUS:

It’s description on the Karcher website: For frequent and powerful cleaning of large areas around the home e.g. moss-covered and very dirty surfaces.

Oooooh la la.

We started with the sugar soap, and basically scrubbed it all over the deck liberally.

After giving it a good scrub, I got Mr Karcher working. Oh boy. Was this exciting. Mr Karcher is one real man! It gallantly blasted all the soapy debris OFF the deck, and with such brawn and alacrity!

THEN, we did a second stripping, with deck cleaner that’s specially formulated to help prepare decks for oiling/staining. (Shh, don’t tell it we weren’t doing that!)

We diluted it as instructed, then brushed it on. S got a little distracted.

But he looked SOOOOO cute so I didn’t crack the whip too hard.

After brushing it on, we let it sit for 10 minutes to really let it loosen the oils or do whatever voodoo thing it was meant to do:

You can see the deck is starting to look a bit more worn already, which is exactly what we wanted, but we were concerned that there was still too much oil in there. Oh well, we figured we’d take it as it came.

After the deck cleaner had soaked for a bit, we Mr Karchered it again, this time using the “weapon of mass destruction” attachment. This made SERIOUS jets of water that lambasted everything within sight – in fact, it tore weeds from the pavement, stripped paint off the wall I tested it on (oops) and this got me a little more excited than it should’ve:

After warning S not to be annoying whilst I had that thing in my hands, I sprayed or rather OBLITERATED the deck cleaner soapiness from the boards.

Then, I gave it a second jet, but this time followed each line BETWEEN the decking boards to get all the mud/grime/oil out of them. A lot of gunk and soap came out, so don’t skip this step!

Then we let it dry out again. (Note, if you are using a high pressure water cleaner, wear proper shoes OR don’t ever ever let the jet go on your own little delicate toes. I’m just sayin’…. not that my toes were bruised or anything…)

At this stage, as the deck dried, we could see the deck cleaner had stripped it back a bit more, bringing us closer to the goal!

Lastly, we decided to give the deck a light sanding. We don’t have much experience with the electric hand sander, so S decided to do it BY HAND. People, can I just tell you right now how much respect I have for this man, going to sand down a 30 sq metre deck by hand?? So off he got to work, with determination and zeal.

I sat there and watched, in silent awe. He works fast and diligently, and was done in under 2 hours! If that doesn’t deepen your love, what else would?!

After the sanding, we did one last blast with the water cleaner. You can see even wet, the redness has been stripped out beautifully, and the raw wood is starting to show. Exactly what we wanted.

We crossed our fingers and waited for it to dry…

And success!

The wood was now pretty stripped, a little raw (but not too much), and smooth for a lovely painting surface. So there you have it, THAT is how you strip, prime and prep a deck for painting – with many little steps, lots of cleaning, and some (of S’s) elbow grease!

PART 3 comes tomorrow people, and that’s where you get to see the finished, beautiful, painted deck!

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backyard blitz: the deck, part 1

Posted by Sharon Pakir on Dec 30, 2010 in Home & Decor | 1 comment

So S and I have been on a bit of a home-making blitz since moving in just 2 months ago. So far we’re still a tad embarrassed to receive visitors – moving from 2 very different homes to 1, coupled with travel and time-poor schedules (oh and you know, debilitating condition), we haven’t been as productive at getting our home ready as we’d like.

So far we’ve managed to get most of the furniture chosen, bought and moved in, most of our artwork up, and most rooms are functional but not as pretty as I’d like. Also, I’ve still got embarrassing messes everywhere from things that I haven’t found a logical storage home for and am unwilling to stash haphazardly (lest the gods of missing things comes and nabs them). For the most part, the inside of the house is functional, so we thought we’d take advantage of the summer weather to commit some outdoor time to the house.

We have started with the deck – truth be told, we’ve worked so quickly that I didn’t get any before shots. Picture in your mind a regular wooden deck, with wooden beams and about 30 square metres. Oh yeah, a big deck. Our loungeroom opens up into it with wide sliding doors, so it had to be a bit prettier than raw wood, so we started with the beams, posts and pillars.

First, S’s friend Brian gave everything a good once over with his electric hand sander (we didn’t own one, and were a bit terrified to use it, given it’s our first ever DIY project!), then poly-filled the holes, cracks, and dodgy bits.

Then, S got to work sanding everything down by hand with sandpaper. My job here was to uh… watch, and appreciate his fine handywork. Oh, and shout motivational cheers. With pompoms.

Then, and this is key, ON THE SAME DAY, we decided “how hard can it be to paint it all in a few hours”, and off we went painting. Note: this is going to decline quickly into a tale of despair.

And MAN, did that wood just DRINK up the paint. It was really hard, getting the paint to get ON the wood required some elbow grease – we’d paint a stroke and just watch it disappear into the wood, and then PRESS another layer over that. And this was just the first coat. AND it was all 13 feet high so arduous hours precariously perched right on top of ladders, and lots of trips down the ladder to shift it inches by inches, across the deck as we slowly gained ground. *starts pulling out hair thinking about it*…

Luckily we had 2 ladders, so we could work in tandem.

3 hours later, we were still going, and we weren’t even halfway through. We were hungry, too, but so dead-driven on completing the task that we weren’t about to give up. S contemplated doing some strange things, which you just KNOW means delirium is setting in.

Believe it or not, another 4 hours later, we were STILL going, and oh my goodness, the sun had set, and oh my goodness, we still kept finding random beams that had been forgotten, and oh my goodness, I was going crazy trying to not get paint on the ceiling whilst covering the itty-bitty beams that wouldn’t take the paint and… ARRRRRRRRGH!

And did I mention this was a FREAK day in the middle of summer, where it was about 15 degrees (hence my fleece jumper)… AND it was Boxing Day, which meant all that plagued my mind was how I was missing the sales for THIS?! PAINTING?!

Finally though, 7 hours from when we’d started painting, it was done. Excuse the bad photography, I was so tired S had to carry me off the ladder and put me to bed. Oh, and the grainy iphone photos? The DSLR was too heavy for me to try using, I was that exhausted.

A really bad, shaky-handed panorama shot of the first coat done:

So, with that, sore, achey, tired and grumpy, we went to bed.

We woke up the next morning, and the finish didn’t look bad at all (considering we did a lot of it in the dark):

So we spent the day doing the 2nd and 3rd coats. These went on a LOT more easily, because the wood was no longer raw, and the first coat served as a nice smooth base to paint upon. The second coat probably took about just over 2 hours, and S basically followed me around doing the 3rd coat. All in all, it was about 4.5 hours for the second and 3rd coat, which was INCREDIBLE improvement over the day before!

We didn’t NEED to do a 3rd coat, but the 2nd coat was still a teeny bit patchy, and so I went reading the instructions on the can. We used Wattyl Solaguard exterior paint, and it said it was guaranteed for 10 years with 2 coats, and 15 years with 3 coats. WELL. You didn’t have to tell us twice, so off we went with the 3rd coat.

And man, were we pleased we did – the finish became SO smooth and opaque, and the beams looked like new.

We DID have to buy double the amount of paint we’d estimated/been quoted – but that’s because we didn’t prime (Wattyl Solaguard is self-priming) and like i said, the raw timber just drank the paint. We also hadn’t anticipated (so enthusiastically) doing a 3rd coat.

Verdict: We love it. It was a lot of hard work, more than we’d expected, but sooooo worth it. The deck now looked more complete, and certainly more like a “part of the house” rather than “random outdoor feature”. It also looks more in line with the character of our Edwardian weatherboard home. It makes the deck brighter and more airy, and because it’s our “forever home”, we’re glad it’ll last (with luck) 10-15 years.

It was also our first ever DIY big job, so we were pretty proud with the results. Next step  - the decking itself. Stay tuned for Backyard Blitz – The deck, part 2!!

What we used (all purchased at Bunnings):

Electric hand sander

Sand paper (lots of it!)

Wattyl Solaguard paint in Creamy Natural

Bunnings cheap paintbrushes

Bunnings rollers & paint trays

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