Frugal Tip: Saving Money On A New Deck

We built our house in 1999; two years later we added a deck onto the front of the house. The deck is south facing so it gets a lot of sun, and living in Vermont, it also gets a lot of snow during the winter. We do a good job of keeping the deck shoveled, but it still gets a good beating from the elements. The deck had been stained but after 11 years it was in pretty poor shape.

After the deck was scraped and sanded it really looked pretty bad. We got an estimate to put down an Azec deck, which is a low maintenance decking, engineered to withstand the everyday things that happen on a deck. Nice as that would have been it was just too expensive.

My husband did some more research and found a special paint manufactured by ArmorGarage. They advertised it as a permanent solution for outdoor wood, concrete decks and porches. It’s called “Deck Renew It Coating” and they claimed it would restore the beauty of your decks and never chip or peel off.

After spending quite a bit of time on their website, and talking to their customer service, my husband was sold. He ordered the paint and got the deck refinished. The paint is expensive, but not nearly as expensive as a new deck. It’s not slippery when wet, and it doesn’t get as hot as the stained deck used to. It won’t last forever, but it should give our deck many more years of use before the boards have to be replaced.

In case your curious what the opening is for on our deck, we have metal grates which are installed so the ice doesn’t build up on the deck in the winter. Here is the before and after shot for comparison.

Linked to: NaturalLivingMamma, FrugallySustainable, TheThriftyHome, WeAreThatFamily