Painting Fools

With some clear weather on the horizon, we tackled 2 big projects -- staining the old deck and painting the barn. Antonio scraped the barn for us, but rain prevented him from doing any painting. We had power washed the deck before our NY trip, now it needed sanding and we had to select a stain color. The color selection proved to be the hardest part of the job.

While Dan sanded with the belt sander, I primed the barn wall, prepping for paint. I was a bit stiff from the long car ride, so I primed the lower half first, and left the ladder work to yesterday. I don't have a photo, but the priming is complete.

Meanwhile, Dan finished sanding and we had finally settled on a color -- Cabot Semi-transparent Deck Stain in Oracle Sun. It was a challenge to settle on that, but we thought it would look good with the yellow house and the green barn. When we got to the paint store, though, we saw an actual stain sample, and it was not a good color -- think Band-Aid, but a hair more orange, yuk.

So, we looked at the available samples, and decided on Desert Sand. We got home, and opened the can -- it looked a bit funky, but we gave it a try. Two rows of decking in the back were enough to convince me, Desert Sand was NOT the color I wanted to be looking at for the next 3 years. It was very neutral in a not beige, not yellow, not cream, not tan sort of way. It just seemed to have no life to it. Blah. (We love color -- the interiors of our house are rich deep red, pine green, deep taupe, deep amber pine paneling,etc.)

Back to the drawing board. After much discussion, we chose Forest Green, pretty much a 180 degree change. For some reason, this batch of stain went on much more smoothly, covering more transparently and the wood seemed to absorb it better -- who knows why. The end result? Well, it has life, and a lot of color. It is way more blue than the chip showed. I wouldn't choose this color again, but I can live with it for now.

This project has me running scared about selecting a stain color for our new deck. The only thing I can positively say is that the colors look nothing like the brochure samples or the wood samples in the store.