A back story is needed on this page.

The previous owner painted the floor/deck of the south porch dark green. When we bought the house, I knew that we would have to do something about that floor because:

1. it's very slippery because it's painted,
2. the dark color makes it hot to stand/walk/lay on,
3. the heat radiating from the floor also adds heat to that side of the house (which is fine in the winter, but really bad in the summer),
4. being a floor, it gets a lot of wear and that means alot of maintenance because the paint wears off exposing the wood to rain and sun.

Why not just strip off the paint, you say? You'd think that would be easy, but it's really not. Once a floor is painted, you may as well plan to paint it forever.

That being said, I searched for the appropriate paint to use. There are paints made to use on floors, but they are for enclosed spaces that may get some moisture, but not much. Some of these paints put a 'grit' into the paint to give a bit of traction (less slippery). The problem is these specialize paints are VERY EXPENSIVE.

I really didn't want to have to tear out the porch to fix this problem; but as a temporary fix until we could find an affordable solution, I purchased more of the Glidden Gripper paint (white) that is both a primer and sealer to at least cover the dark color and exposed wood. I added a Kwik-rete product made to put 'grit' into paint for floor applications. Supposedly, you can simply powerwash/scrape the old paint and the Gripper will adhere to both old paint and exposed wood. I'll tell you right now, that after painting it in the late summer... the Gripper paint was flaking off before the end of the year. We have had chips of that paint being tracked into the house by both our feet and the dog's feet/hair for the last year and a half. It was a complete waste of money and time. There is still some of the white paint on the floor and it has made a difference regarding the temperature and amount of light coming in the window.

I figured that I would have to sand and repaint the floor. So, I went to a rental shop to find out the cost of a floor sander and the particulars of about renting one and how to use it. I found out that I had to be sure there were no screws or nails or wood sticking out from the surface because that would get into the works of the machine and ruin it. And since I really didn't want to have to buy a ruined piece of rental equipment, removing those obstacles became priority one.

Like so many other areas in this house, the deck has construction challenges (isn't that a nice way to put it?). Whoever put in the floor didn't care whether or not the screws were flush with the wood. So at least half of them stick up and we catch stuff on them alot. So finding out about the floor sander means having to remove those offending screws and replacing them AND sealing the holes so that they don't hold water.

I headed to Home Depot to get deck screws and extra bits for the drill (we figure there will be many getting ruined in the process of removing those old screws). And there I discovered a new product for rejuvenating old decks. It is called Deck Restore™ by a company called Synta. Basically, it is "painted" on with a roller and leaves a textured surface that looks great and appears to be exactly what we need for this deck. I've been talking with a gentleman from Synta about the possibility of Synta being a sponsor and providing enough of the Deck Restore™ to cover the south porch floor. Cross your fingers and toes... it looks promising!

 Things have changed a little bit, because last fall I was searching craigslist for lumber to make into raised beds for my vegetable (etc.) garden. I found 16 ft long, weathered 2x10s at an amazing price! They had been used on a commercial construction site to hold down tarps over materials through the winter and would have been sent to a landfill if they had not been pulled out of the dumpster. I was able to get 48 of them delivered to us.

As we were loading them from the trailer into the old stable (translation: storage area), we realized they are a much better quality wood than what currently makes up our south porch floor. We decided to replace the flooring with the new wood and use the old floor wood to make the raised beds.

We also discovered that I don't have the strength to remove the old screws. So, the hubby has been removing screws and boards and replacing them with the new boards as time allows. It is very time consuming because we want to reuse the wood.

To date (mid-May 2011), he is a third of the way done and there is one raised bed in place and planted. There is another raised bed ready to be put in place and enough wood for several more.

This picture explains the process of removing the screws.

First, Gary uses a chisel to remove enough wood from around the screw head so that he can grip it with the vice grips. Then he unscrews it using the grips. He tried using the drill, but the screws are wedged in solid between the wood (seeing as how it has expanded due to moisture).

If he's lucky, the whole screw will come out; if not, the head breaks off which leaves the rest of the screw to be dealt with.

Once he has the screws (or the heads) out, he pries up each board.

He discovered that the installers also used nails to hold the boards in place before screwing them down.

So after this, he turns each board over and hammers out those nails and unscrews the remains of any screws that are still in the wood.

The new boards are wider than the old boards. It takes about 1 new board to replace 3 old boards.

The supporting wood appears to be good and solid and we discovered that below the floor joists about 1/3 of the way out from the house are 4x4 wood 'beams' perpendicular to the joists.

This is also helping us to figure out where some electric lines are located/going to.

The threshold of the door is a bit above the level of the floor, so Gary put treated wood there.

Notice how he uses a board to use between the new threshold and the hammer. This helps keep the new wood from being damaged and also keeps the other end from moving back out.

We won't be able to cover the ends with the Synta product, so we have to paint them.

I decided to leave the skirt of the deck the dark green color, so am using Rustoleum (oil based) paint to treat the ends of the wood.

You may be wondering about the wire? Since we have dogs and we don't want them going through the stiles, we attached 3 ft. garden fence along the inside of the rails. Plus we used it in the spots where the yard fence doesn't quite make it to the house.