We have been doing a lot of outside home improvements this season for overall better curb appeal. Late this Summer, we painted our house. In fact, I just finished the trim work around the last set of windows last night in our super nice 60 degree weather. Last week, I cleared out an old overgrown flower bed in front of our house and added beautiful mums.
Next, we decided to stain our old wood deck. Eventually, I’d like to replace the front deck and the flower bed to put in more traditional landscape gardening and perhaps a poured, stamped concrete porch and wrap around walkway around the house. That is a huge project for another time. For now, we are honestly just trying to get the outside of our home up to par with our beautiful new Clopay entry and garage doors. They are stunning and have totally transformed our home’s appearance.
First, we power washed the deck to get rid of the dirt, grime, and old stain.

Once it dried, I trimmed the exterior of the deck with a paint brush. We used Sherwin Williams DeckScapes semi-transparent stain. This was the most time consuming part.

I used a tool that attaches to a long painting handle to finish the job. It was very easy and only took a couple hours. Once it dried, I stained it again.

The results are great! It still isn’t a perfect deck but is very, very much improved. The total cost was about $100 since I ended up using 2 gallons of stain for the deck and adjoining flower bed. Otherwise, it would have been just about $60 with supplies.

Our indoor outdoor rug from Sam’s Club completes the new and improved front deck, making the entrance to our home more inviting. I plan to add comfy furniture to this area in the future to make it a place to relax, visit with others, and enjoy our new outdoor living space.
What do you think? Did staining our deck add curb appeal?