Restore Deck Resurfacer - One Year Later

If you remember, last year we had to repaint our deck because of a violation we received after our city did exterior inspections on all of the houses. Wanting a quick fix and knowing we are going to rebuild the deck within a few years anyway, we opted to try Restore Deck Liquid Armor Resurfacer. (You can see the link to the original posts here and here). In case you aren't familiar with this product and don't want to take the time to read the previous post, this product is basically a really thick, sandy paint that is supposed to fill cracks and resurface your deck. It comes in a huge array of colors (we chose "bark") and at first I loved the impact! It brought our red stained, worn out deck back to life with the rich even chocolate (errr, bark) color! I thought it was amazing.

I'm sorry to say, however, that it has NOT held up well! Not well at all.

The coat has worn thin in sooo many places and you can see the original wood coming through. (Don't be distracted by the cute pup and pretty mums!)

The whole entire deck is like this. Even in areas we never even walk.

The area by the door is the worst though. It looks like it aged 20-years in one year. UGH!

Overall now the texture of the deck is just hideous. I'm sure if we bought another few gallons we could put on another layer and fix it up, but I'm also afraid if we make the coating thicker it will wear even faster. And I don't really want to spend my money to fix a problem I don't think I should have had to fix in the first place if it were a better quality product! It doesn't sit right with me that a company becomes even MORE profitable because they make a crappy product you have to keep replacing, so I have a hard time giving them any more of my money. 

The other frustrating thing is that to redo the current deck at this point would really not be fun. Sanding it when it was red and worn would have been one thing, but trying to sand and strip it now with this sandy, gunky texture it would nearly be impossible.

SO, for now we've decided to let it look like crap and then next summer we'll talk more seriously about replacing the entire deck and/or doing a better short fix. (Thank goodness my city doesn't do exterior inspections every year!)

Overall, I would not use this product again. It was a quick, cheap fix and quite frankly we got what we paid for!!