A sunny weekend, and a part time painter with more enthusiasm than expertise, and a deck that’s about to become the canvas of a truly epic home improvement failure. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. Absolutely everything. We see this over and over again. Someone painting a deck with no preparation and leading to complete failure.

It all starts with the best of intentions. Having watched exactly 2.5 YouTube tutorials and convinced deck staining is easy. Armed with a bargain-bin stain, a roller that looked like it had survived several home renovation apocalypses, and an outfit that screamed “I’m ready to destroy some property,“.

First mistake: Stopping off at Home Depot or the Paint Store like Sherwin Williams and buying some full coverage opaque stain.

With the best of intentions, the wrong product is purchased an no matter what happens after that, the deck will need to be replaced.

and of course, the painter discovers a fundamental truth of home improvement: gravity is not your friend. The stain ran faster than a teenager avoiding chores, creating beautiful “abstract” patterns that looked less “rustic charm” and more “toddler’s finger painting gone wrong.”

Midway through the project, he realized he’d forgotten to move the patio furniture. Now, instead of a pristine wooden deck, he had a masterpiece of random stain splatters and furniture-shaped unstained rectangles. It was like a weird woodworking version of connect-the-dots.

By the end of the day, he’s managed to stain:

• 40% of the deck

• 60% of his clothing

• 100% of his pride is boosted after the job is complete.

• Several unfortunate bushes

• The deck now looked like it had survived a paint bomb explosion during a windstorm. Some might call it a disaster.

  The issue is the deck looks better than before, a check is written and the painter will never be seen again.

  The deck fails at the first snowfall, and Moorhouse Coating will get a call to figure it out…