Hit a weird milestone refinishing my deck last weekend

I was sanding down the last section of my 20 year old deck in Tacoma and counted exactly 147 carpenter bees nests in the wood. Every single one had to get filled with wood putty before I could stain it. Has anyone else found a crazy number of bug holes in their old deck wood before?

2 comments

2 Comments

owens.cameron18d ago

and 147 is a lot but honestly that sounds about right for a deck that old in the Pacific Northwest. All that damp weather just makes the wood soft and perfect for them to drill into. I had an even crazier situation with my parents' old place down in Olympia where we pulled off the fascia boards and there was basically a whole network of tunnels running through the back side, like a little carpenter bee highway system. We ended up having to replace half the boards because the putty just wouldn't fill all the way in some of the bigger holes. It's a pain but at least you caught it before the stain went on because once you seal that moisture in, the rot just spreads faster than you can keep up with.

derek65618d ago

Disagree. Caulk and paint make you the carpenter you ain't.