Before you say goodbye to your deck for the season
Soon you’ll be staring longingly at your beautiful deck or porch, remembering all the good times you had during the summer. Before you say goodbye to your deck for the season, there’s one last project that needs to be taken care of: prepare your deck for the long winter ahead.
Remove all dirt, stains and debris from your deck before winter hits
Once winter is over, the snow melted, you want your deck to come out looking refreshed and new; ready to take on the spring and summer seasons. Cleaning and protecting your deck one last time before winter hits will ensure that you can start to use your deck at the first sign of spring. Since you’re already going down your checklist for prepping your home for fall and winter, don’t forget to include your porch on that list.
All the good time you had on your deck has probably taken its toll. By now, your porch should look like a collage of memories in the form of scratches, dents, dirt, food stains, BBQ dirt and the shoe marks of all your friends and family. But, you need to wipe those memories clean so that your porch can withstand the obstacles ahead: ice, snow, and sleet.
Scrub your deck with a cleaning solution. If your wood had faded, warped, split or cracked, consider stripping your porch before you apply a new coat of protective finish.
Give your porch or deck a coat of protective finish to help fight winter frost and snow
Everything about winter spells moisture. Applying a protective finish that will repel water before winter comes is the best way to protect your porch from wet winter weather. If your porch is left damaged and unprotected in the winter months, you’re just inviting more problems. Those issues may be covered by an angelic blanket of pure white snow, but once that snow melts you’ll be blaming yourself for not taking the time to prepare your deck for winter.
Moisture is the root of all evil, and will turn your deck into a moldy, rotten disaster if you don’t take steps to protect it now.