Now that the planter box was done, we could start wrapping things up. The first big chore was removing a large amount of dirt and decomposed granite that had accumulated over the course of the project. This meant digging and hauling out about 25 buckets worth of crap that I wanted out of the yard.

The last step involved using orbital sanders to sand the entire deck. This was done to remove any scratches introduced during construction, and to get rid of all the pencil marks that had been created for the screws.

After sanding, the deck was blown clean with a compressor and swept multiple times to remove as much of the dust as possible prior to finishing.

The deck was finished with a penetrating oil designed for outdoor hardwoods (called Penofin). The Penofin was rubbed onto the entire deck, then after about 10-15 minutes, wiped with clean cloths to remove any excess oil. Ipe is tremendously hard, and resists almost every finish you could try to apply, so the oil wouldn’t go very deep. Regardless, once it was done, the result was pretty spectacular.

And here are the guys who made it all happen…I owe our new outdoor room to Anderson and Roberto. They did a fantastic job with a smile, and were an absolute pleasure to work with every step of the way.