How to Care for Your Decks and Patios

Hi everyone, Beth Dodson here with Homes.com. I wanted to say happy day. It's Tuesday, I believe, and it is a warm, wonderful day in most parts of the country. Some people are experiencing some other challenges. We wish you to be safe. I know there's been some flash flooding in some areas of Baltimore County, Maryland. Kinda crazy, but stay safe, and hopefully that flooding has moved away. So, thank you all for joining us. We're here to talk to you today about how to care for your decks and patios. And for those of you who come back and watch this at a later date, thank you. We really appreciate your views. And one of the things we wanna talk about with decks and patios is what kind of care can you do for these? There's several different decks and several different patios that make an impact and can add value to your home. So, that's the first thing. Decks and patios can actually add a lot of value to homes because homeowners are looking for new ways to entertain outside. And so, these have a lot of value when it comes to your homes, and they're fairly affordable to add if you do things kind of simplistically. If you wanna go extra, extra special, then you can build an oasis. In your backyard, so we're going to start with decks. Some of the ways you can take care of them. So there's two different types of decking material that's actually used. There's what we refer to as a synthetic or composite decking material, and that material is something like Atrex. There's a bunch of other brands out there as well, but Atrex is basically a composite of materials that they push together and they actually build. Decking material and it looks like it's a wood deck, but in actuality it is not. So the reason why this is really popular and the reason why everyone is using this is because this composite material is easy to install, it's affordable, and it's easy to care for. When it comes to synthetic decking or composite decking, Simply a rinse-off makes all the difference. You know, a little scrub, maybe even a little sip of water, but it really is simple to care for these types of decks. The second type of deck we want to talk about is wood. Wood is a little bit more challenging, but it's so beautiful. Many people may have wood decks or may continue to have wood decks. Those decks require care. And wood decks actually require a bit more care than, let's say, composite or synthetic decks. Wood decks is a process, and so it's a couple steps. The first process is to actually remove all the furniture that's on your deck. That's the first thing you need to do. And you wanna take a pressure washer and you wanna pressure wash your deck. Now, you have to be careful with pressure washers. Sometimes they're super, super powerful, and that strength and that power can cause them to cause more problems or strip the deck of more color and cause more splinters. So if a pressure washer is too powerful for your deck, you can use a sprayer that's a little bit lighter in pressure that will effectively do the same thing to clean your deck. And how you do that is you wanna spray the decks, And then you want to make sure you're cleaning them. And when you're pressure washing them and you're spraying them, they're damp, they're wet. So you need to wait for them to dry before taking the next action. Sometimes it will take 24 hours, sometimes 48 hours, maybe even 72 hours. But the reality is you want your decks to be able to dry thoroughly before you take on the next steps. Then you may actually need a little sanding once you've pressure washed or sprayed a deck, you may start finding that there's splinters or the wood is just worn and it's a little bit older. So it's a really good time to pressure wash— excuse me, to sand those decks. So sand those decks and sand them. You can use either a hand sander, which can take a long time, or you can use a push sander, and sometimes you can use some machinery. An electronic sander, but be careful of the electronic sanders because you may sand too low. So it's important to know how far to sand your deck because you don't want to sand the deck so far that you no longer have a deck. So be very careful. You just want to do light sanding to get— remove any splinters or anything like that. Once you've done the sanding, then you can stain your deck. Some people just like to seal their deck, like a neutral color or like a gloss. Some people wanna stain their deck a completely different color than the actual natural wood. You can do either. The same principles occur. You wanna basically paint the stain or the gloss over the deck to care for it. And when you paint and stain the deck, you want to be able to not step on it for several days. So this is a really great weekend project to actually stain and gloss over your deck, so to care for it. It's definitely a weekend project, maybe even 2 weekends. So let the deck stain dry, and that can take several hours, it could take all day, depending on how big your deck is, depending on how much sun you get, depending on the weather where you are. Also make sure it's not raining. And also let it dry. Then you're gonna add the next coat. You're gonna add another coat. Let those both dry. It's like painting a wall in your house. Let that second coat dry, and then what you wanna do is once that second coat is dry, then you can put furniture back on the deck. You can allow people on the deck. It's really important to keep pets and children and family members off your deck. While it's stained or while it's pressure washed. Let it dry. And even putting like little tape up and preventative measures. Block your doorways so that nobody can get out. That's a little tip that you might wanna try. But once it's done, you then now have a brand new looking deck. Easy, just great. I mean, it is definitely a weekend project. If it's not something that you wanna do yourself 'cause you wanna spend your weekend, boating or swimming or just being anywhere, then definitely hire out for it, 'cause it's also another thing that someone else can come in and do very quickly, and you can probably get it done in a week. So, that's the thing when it comes to wood decks. As you can tell, wood decks, little bit more needs than you would have if you have a synthetic deck. It's one of the reasons why the synthetic decks have become so popular. It's almost like siding on a house, like aluminum siding has become very popular, Versus, let's say, shingles, because shingles required a lot of care and maintenance. The third component we want to talk about today is patios. Now, some people live in areas where they choose not to have decks; they have patios instead. And patios can be stone, they can be concrete, they can be other types of material, they can be blocks, they can be all kinds of things—even tile. If your weather can sustain it. So what you want to do is you want to be able to clean those areas. You can still pressure wash these areas. However, you have to be very careful when you pressure wash these areas because if you pressure wash areas where there's grout or there's, um, sections of the area like a patio with stone between everything, it could cause problems with the way your patio layout will be, I guess. It'll be. So here's what happens. If you've got tile and you choose to pressure wash it, you have to be very careful because the pressure wash can pull up the grout, and then you would have to just regrout it. So maybe using a hose and some soap and water to wipe it down Even with a traditional mop, that can be very effective for tile. When it comes to patios, maybe you have stones that have pebbles or even decomposed granite in between them to hold them in place. I would not recommend pressure washing them because all of a sudden all that decomposed granite and those pebbles will get blown all over the place, and the stones themselves could get damaged because of the pressure, because some of these stones are not as Sturdy, as you would see. And then furthermore, these stones could get loose and they may not remain where they are, and then that could cause problems with people walking around your yard. So keep all these things in mind when you are deciding to clean your patios. Simply using a hose to gently brush off some of the dirt, sweeping a patio is also really good. And And concrete's another thing. If you have concrete patios, a pressure washer is totally acceptable to use on them. Keep in mind, you may not have a great concrete job. I don't know how that's possible, but that happens to me every now and then. You may get holes in your concrete, so then you gotta fill it with concrete. So just keep that in mind when you are pressure washing, is be as gentle as you can in some areas and be, And try to make sure that your concrete stays intact. So, all of that are some tips on how to take care of your synthetic, your wood decks, and your patios. So, some tips just for you, 'cause I know some people have probably already done this in the spring, but some people are still trying to get through all their spring and summer projects. I know I am. I'll be the first one to admit it. I'm so far behind on spring and summer projects. Because we had a big rainy season and I just cannot get in front of everything. Then I had some travel. But those are your tips for this week on Facebook Live, how to care for your decks and patios. Otherwise, I hope you are having a blast this summer and you are enjoying your decks and patios along with whatever adventures you're doing these summer days. But also, thank you for joining. Really appreciate it. I saw a couple people come in and out in this Facebook Live. For those of you who watch it later, thank you again for watching. We appreciate everything and everyone for their time, because we know this does take up your time. If you have any comments or want to see any specific topics on all things home, let me know and I will be sure to get the information for you so that you can have it. When you need it, so thank you very much. If you like this video, please share it. Please tell everybody about who we are, Hamzada, and I look forward to talking to everybody and meeting everybody. Have a great day and happy summer.