Repainting outdoor patio furniture

When you look at life there are some things you can feel good about, like high-end, low-maintenance metal patio furniture with a baked-on enamel finish.

If you still haven't invested in great patio furniture, you probably have different things to feel good about. Like a saucy collection of antique slide-rules, or more than three pairs of matching socks. If you're in this category with me, I'm guessing you may have painted wooden patio furniture too. And it has issues.

So here's my way of restoring weathered outdoor furnishings in a way that should keep them looking fresh (enough) for about five years.

1. Disclaimer: If you have a short attention span, this job may test your limits. Set aside an entire weekend. Maintain a steely focus on your goal, which is to seal the wood so well that no water can possibly get into it ever again, for a while.
2. Start by making all of the bare spots bigger (an option that's familiar to many of us as we age). Scrape off the loose paint flakes, blisters and peeling bits using your favourite weapon of macro destruction: a paint scraper, wire brush, a shard of glass, or cabinet scraper. Concentrate on removing all paint that has lifted. If you find areas where the paint is sound and still bonded to the wood surface, you're lucky. Leave it alone.
3. If your piece has curves, try using a fine wire wheel ($5 at the hardware store) loaded into a drill. Warning: If you press too hard the bristles will score the wood surface, but 'rustic' may be an effect you've learned to accept in your work.
4. Once you've removed all of the flaky paint, switch to coarse (60-grit) sandpaper in an electric sander, if you've got one, or a sanding sponge if you're working manually. Roughly sand the entire surface to prep for the primer coat.
5. If you want a really sweet, slick final finish, go to the extra effort of feathering the hard, raggedy edges of patches where the old paint is still soundly adhered to the wood. If you omit this step you'll get a cratered effect when the fresh paint goes on over the old stuff. To feather, use 100-grit sandpaper to take down the edges of the old coat(s) of paint. This works best with an electric random orbit sander, but if you're using human power, the effort will give you pleasingly firm deltoids.
6. Be alert. The object you're working on needs to be moisture-free before you proceed with the next step. If it's been outside until today, give it 48 hours indoors with a fan blowing across it to ensure that it's good and dry. Then proceed.
7. Caulk the cracks in the wood, caulk the joints, and add a dab of caulk over screw holes and nail holes. For total exhilaration, use the caulk of the future: LePage No More Sealant Guns 'Super All Purpose' caulking is packaged in a totally convenient pressurized tube with a dripless, built in trigger, so you don't need a messy caulking gun. No More Sealant Guns is also mould and mildew resistant, flexible, watertight, low odour and cleans up with water. Plus you can rinse out the nozzle and store the unused portion of the caulk for six months. Beyond lovely. Roughly $8.
8. Prime the piece with a good exterior primer, either water-based or alcohol-based. If you're working on pine or fir, an alcohol-based BIN stain-blocking primer will prevent yellowish-brown pitch and sap stains from bleeding through the paint later.
9. Apply at least one topcoat of your favourite exterior paint. Traditionally, oil-based alkyd paints were the preferred choice for exterior use, but this is no longer the case with new developments in latex- and acrylic-based paints, which flex with the freeze and thaw cycles, and don't split and crack like oil-based paint. My favourite for all exterior use is water-based 'porch and floor' paint, a tough, durable blend available from most paint manufacturers.

Tips

• Don't paint in direct sunlight, which can cause the paint surface to skim over, followed by blistering.
• Wear a respirator mask if you're scraping or sanding paint that was applied before the late Sixties; it may contain lead.