Deck refinishing....

So.....when I moved into my house I had a beautiful deck out back - compete with a gate so Miss E could enjoy the deck with me and I wouldn't worry about her running off. Only ONE small problem with my beautiful deck...the hideous red stain. In itself the red might not have been so awful (other then why on earth they would have chosen red is completely beyond me)...but it also was in desperate need of refinishing. The stain was peeling in many places. So....the first on my to do list of activities during layoff....refinish the deck!

To set the mood...here is a before picture.


So last week...can't remember which day...I set to work. First I got out my power sander and started sanding away some of the obvious peels. Then I headed to home depot to get paint and stain stripper. Since then I've been working 2-4 hours per day painting on the stripper, wetting everything down, and scraping it with a wire brush. Good times for sure! Slowly but surely though I'm starting to make progress. And despite how bad the stained deck looked, the wood underneath is in near perfect condition still!

Here's the same point of view as above, missing stain:


I think I have one more day of stripping to finish it up. Not sure when that will be since I think its going to rain the rest of this week and I'm going to head up to mom's this weekend. Once that is finally done then I'll clean the entire thing and decide on how I want to complete the project. Ideally, I'd just put sealer on it and let it stay natural. Unfortunately, there are some spots that I just can't seem to get all the red off of. Which leads me to believe another solid stain will be necessary (though at least I could pic a more neutral color than RED). Though I'm hopeful that if I do a good enough job with the red maybe I could do a semi transparent. Did you guys know how many options there are to choose from? Check this out:



And some additional progress pictures for you all: