Staining Our Deck with Olympic Rescue It

When we bought our house two years ago, we knew that we'd have to stain our deck.  I don't think it was ever stained or sealed and we knew we'd have to do something to it.  The deck isn't old, but it did have some spots that were splintering (or whatever the word is...you know what I mean) and since we didn't think it had ever been stained or sealed, we wanted to try out the Olympic Rescue It resurfacer that we had seen on commercials.  

We headed to Lowe's last Saturday morning and picked up four gallons mixed in the Timberline color.  They have tons of colors you can pick from.  I don't love the color we picked, it is a little too "red" for me, I wish it would have been more of a tan or brown.  Anyway, our deck is not huge, it's roughly 182 square feet not counting the step.  The Olympic Rescue It says you need to do two coats, and one gallon will cover 50 square feet doing two coats, so that's why we picked up four gallons.  They were priced right about $35 per gallon, but we got a $10 rebate on each one, so it was basically $100 for our deck.  We only ended up using just over two gallons, so I guess we have lots of extra for touch ups if we need it!

Here is what our deck looked liked before:

We power washed the deck a few days before so it would be dry, and then we cleaned it off real good Saturday morning.  I used a brush and got in between all the cracks and did the sides, while Kevin used a roller with an extender to roll the top.  The stain is like a very thick paint, but it actually went on really easily.  We had to wait 6 hours before we could put on the second coat.  We did the second coat that evening and then were able to be on it the next morning.

Here's how it turned out:

That photo was taken on my iphone the day after we finished.  These are from last night, the lighting isn't great.

The stain is not smooth, it has a little bit of texture to it.  It's very thick, so it fills in all the cracks.  You definitely can't get a sliver from it any more!  

I took a close up photo so you could kind of see the texture of it:

Even though the color isn't what I hoped it would be, I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  I feel like it finally looks "finished."  I didn't realize how bad our deck needed to be stained until I saw the before and after pics together.

I'm really curious to see how it holds over time.  We get rain, snow, sun, and we are out on it all the time.  I'll keep you all posted if we experience any issues or if we are still loving it later.

Have you ever used a product like this on your deck or patio?

***UPDATE:  After going through one winter, our deck looks AWFUL.  The Olympic Rescue It stain bubbled and chipped all over and we will need to re-do the entire deck.  An entire follow up post will be coming soon, and I will include the link here when it is up.