Project Balcony: Step 1

Aaron and I are in charge of preparing the boards for the balcony.  This offsets the cost of the contractor for the balcony... 

Step 1 of preparing the boards is to get the boards stained.  Aaron intended to do this the Friday before we moved in; unfortunately, the stain we originally bought was way too orange.  Because he was waiting on the mattress delivery people, he couldn't run out for a new can of stain.  By the time the mattress set was delivered, Aaron was out of time to get the staining done.  That said, we finally got around to staining the boards this past weekend.

We got up early on Saturday morning to get to work.  Because it's too cold outside, we had to stain the boards in the living room (luckily we still don't have the sectional)! 

We started with a stack of 37 boards; they are 12' long and are 1"x4"s.

We laid down some plastic sheeting to protect the floor and we got to work.  We did about five boards at a time...

 

First step was the Minwax Prestain - this helps make sure the stain goes on evenly.  We were using foam brushes and the goal was a very thin layer.

 

The prestain just makes it look a little wet.  The prestain needed to dry for about 5-10 minutes (and no more than an hour) before applying the stain.

 

Next up was the application of the Minwax stain.  We used "Golden Oak" stain.  Again, we were using foam brushes and the goal was a very thin layer, applied in the direction of the wood grain.

Unlike the prestain, the stain is very easy to see where it has been applied.  The stain looks darker than the finished product will look. 

 

The stained boards needed about 10 minutes for the stain to penetrate the boards before the excess stain would get wiped away.

The excess stain was wiped off with a clean rag.  Again, you wipe in the direction of the wood grain and are supposed to blend any light and dark areas, but we didn't need to worry about that.  In fact, we barely got any stain off with the cloth which means it pretty much all penetrated the wood.

 

And then we had our finished boards!  They look pretty awesome.  I originally wanted a bit darker color, which could be achieved with a second coat of stain, but I didn't want it enough to go through the process of a second coat! ;o)

 

 It took about an hour and a half for us the do half the boards on Saturday morning.  Aaron finished the other half on Saturday evening.  The next step will be to apply a coat of the sealant.  After that, we need to paint the bottom of the boards (to make them more water-proof) before the boards will be put up on the balcony.  After the balcony construction is complete, we need to put another coat of sealant on it...