A Clean Deck

I fell on my butt, got stung by a bee, and ache like an old lady.  But my deck is clean.  It's a big deck:  36' X 14'.  It used to overlook the pool; now it overlooks my gardens.  And, man, was it sorry-looking!  It's not made of decking lumber; it's that fake stuff.  I have mixed feelings about that.  First of all, the color I chose when my friends installed it was a tan color, but after a couple of years, it faded to pink.  Nobody wants a pink deck.  So two years ago, I painted it.  Yes, you can paint fake decking.  It's not great, but it's better than pink.

The problem is that the shaded areas of the deck, the sections that hang onto the snow, tend to get a bit moldy.  Yuck.  Clorox to the rescue!  There's a concentrated Clorox product, Outdoor Bleach, which promises "pro results."  Well, close enough.

First order of business:  clear the deck.  That's when I fell on my butt, trying to move a bar-height table off the deck.  That's also when I got stung.  I have a storage bench on the deck, which I opened up to remove the junk that's in there before I moved it off the deck (hoping to avoid another fall).  Turns out the storage bench was storing some bees and their nest, snuggled into the center of a coil of rope.  Now, I am highly allergic to bees and have ended up in the ER on more than one occasion.  I carry an Epi-pen, a firm believer in the idea that if I carry one, I will never have to use it.  And I never have, mostly because I'm afraid to inject myself.  So I put my thinking cap on and came up with a great idea to get the bees' nest out of there.  I placed a round tupperware container over the coiled rope, then slid a manila folder underneath.  Upon lifting it, one little guy got out and he is the one who nailed me.  (This was several hours ago, and I am still alive, although my arm is hot and achy where he got me.)  I tossed the nest, rope and tupperware into the woods and returned to my deck. 

I guess there were a couple of little guys who were out sucking on the flowers when all this was going on, because they returned to where their home used to be, only to find it gone.  Seriously, they are still out there looking.  And I feel bad, I really do.  But I don't know how I can lead them to their new location without risking another shot in the arm.  I guess they will figure it out sooner or later.

Next:  hose off that deck!  No power-washing . . . I think that can destroy fake decking.  But the single stream on my hose nozzle did a pretty good job cleaning out the spaces between the boards.  This part was actually kind of fun!  Unlike the next step:

Spray the bleach solution on the deck, section by section, and then SCRUB!!  This is why my arms and back are aching.  But look!

Now that's a clean deck!  I love when a job is finished.