Project #27.518: Painting the fence

A couple of weeks ago, I realized my fence needed some help. Actually I am not sure if the fence was stained, painted or what product they used before, but whatever it was, it looked in bad shape. The fence had obvious signs of "paint" peeling away and some of the fence boards were already naked so before the situation got worse I decided to take action.

The first thing I did is a little research to figure out what product I needed. Home Depot provided all the information via one of these touch-screen kiosks in the paint department. According to the guy in the video, the best protection for wood is a fence/deck stain. I'll take his word for granted. There are three different stains, transparent, semi-transparent and solid, being the latter the one that provides the better protection (the label claims 25 years warranty on fences). The fence was already "painted" so I needed to hide the defects of that paint job like paint dripping marks and such. Add to this that I don't want to repeat this work again in two or three years. The result is that I went for the "solid stain": maximum durability and homogeneous color.

As always, my wife chose the color: Brick.

This is the stain that we chose

I already had some of the painting supplies from when I painted the house, so I only needed some rollers, this time I went for quality and chose the Purdy which are MADE IN USA :)

Here is the procedure I followed for staining the fence.

Preparation

• If your fence is full of spiderwebs, bird nests, and such, use a broom to remove these.
• Spray the fence with water, using a garden hose or water sprayer.
• Then wipe it off using a cloth. This will remove all dirt.
• Once dry, it's ready for the stain.

Here I am spraying the fence

Staining

• I applied the stain with the roller horizontally, when trying to do this vertically I noticed some boards were out of alignment so it was easier to do it horizontally.
• Stained around 10 to 15 boards, then waited to dry and repeated with a second coat.
• Then used a 2" paint brush to finish the spots where the roller didn't work, like top and sides of the boards.

Painting the fence horizontally

I am still trying to figure out how to do the other side of the fence, since it's on the neighbor's property.

And this is the result:

Fence is ready to take abuse from San Diego sun

New Hammer Drill

Last week I bought myself a new hammer drill. One guy from Fallbrook, CA was selling this drill for 40 bucks and I went ahead and took wife and kids and drove for 1 hour to pick it up. It was worth the trip, as it's a Dewalt DC925 that is in good condition and will come in handy for masonry work.

We also took the chance to eat some burgers at Nessy Burger which is a very nice place with a town-like feeling and nice people. By the way the burgers are very good.

The first thing I do when I buy something used is clean it up thoroughly. I did this with a grease remover called Oil Eater. Then I opened it up to check the status of the brushes, motor and transmission. The brushes were in very good condition, looked like almost new so it seemed like the drill was not used too often. And the motor was in perfect condition too. I used some compressed air to get dust out of the drill enclosure, motor and other parts, then added some lithium grease to all the drill gears as a maintenance. When doing this, don't add too much grease, just enough for lubrication.

Only thing I am suspicious about the drill is the transmission, sometimes it gets stuck between gears. So I ordered a new transmission and will be replacing it next week. Then it'll be ready to rock and roll.

One of the things I like about this drill, besides its awesome power, is the fact that it comes with an all-metal chuck. The drill is definitely heavier than the typical drill, for example heavier than the Dewalt DC720, but it's also more powerful and includes the hammering feature. Since I use it around the house, I am not so concerned about its weight.

Close-up of the DC925 Rohm chuck

Overall a good drill that hope it will last many years. Can't wait to use it with some TapCon screws.