THE FREEMAN FAMILY: Painter Plastic & Exotic Hardwood

During the month of October, Caleb was busy building a deck for Skip, a Medic he works with at the RFD. This was his 3rd deck of the 'summer' but about as different from the other 2 decks (both in previous blog posts) as you can get.
For Skip's deck, Caleb used Ulin which is an exotic hardwood from Malaysia. Other than this being a very nice wood to work with, it was prestained (which I was particularly excited about because it saved us so much time!) But because it was a hardwood, Caleb had to pre-drill each hole and then counter sink the stainless steel screws, which I then came back and filled each hole with epoxy. I honestly should have had Caleb take a picture of me doing this because it was tedious work! I was down on the deck with a syringe dripping between 2 to 5 drops of epoxy into each hole trying not to get any on the wood itself. Oh, and funny story, Caleb makes up a batch of epoxy (which does harden quickly so time is of the essence) and I get about one and a half rows done and sky opens up ... RAIN! And I'm not talking your typical Seattle mist ... Big Huge Rain Drops. Thanks goodness that painters plastic was on hand because we made a mad dash and covered the entire deck and all of Caleb's tools. Luckily, we were successful and the deck was pretty dry the next day when we came back to finish up. Skip and Caleb did end up throwing one coat of stain on the deck after the epoxy and it really did make the Ulin pop.

Here are pictures ... enjoy!!