Our deck - our sunshine

Our house is a perfect fit for our lives. Much of what it offers us in its 800ish sq. ft. we didn’t even think to ask for, as is the case with our deck.
Now, when we moved here 4 months ago we weren’t quite so focused on energy conservation, but how brilliant is it that our deck was designed with a removable roof (courtesy of Laura’s brother Dan)? In the intense sun of the late Spring, Summer and early Fall, our dining room is shaded by our large sunburst locust tree and the latticed roof of our deck. As the days begin to cool, the leaves will fall and we’ll remove the lattice to storage, and welcome the full, warming sun of winter.
Of course, even a perfect deck needs to be fine-tuned and we’ve decided, come next spring, we’ll discard the now-scrappy lattice (I smell a sweet-pea, honeysuckle and clematis wall on the side of our garage!) and replace it with some kind of landscapers fabric which will allow rain and breeze to pass, but will collect much of the debris we too often find dropped into our coffee cups and wine glasses.
The deck had apparently never been painted – the arsenic of the pressure-treating had warded off nasty mould and rot, and now that the treating had unfortunately leached off (and likely into our water table) it was time for us to protect the wood or watch it decompose and replace. The stain we choose is a semi-transparent oil stain called Wood Shield, which is a Home Hardware brand, made in Canada and formulated for our climate. We had it tinted to something called Lily Pad. The label reads “a linseed oil / alkyd blend” and is lead and mercury free, though of course it contains petroleum distillates. It’s a small window of time that allows for a deck-job; you need to power wash and allow to thoroughly dry, then paint (which is almost a full day) and allow to dry. Fortunately, our neighbour Laura has all the tools of a hardware store which we knew we could borrow her power-washer when the “window” opened, which it did this past week. Our deck is now beautifully Lilp-Padded and ready for winter.