Less than a month left to get stuff done outside before the weather turns cold enough that the paint won’t dry properly before the snow flies. Some years we even get snow in October but usually it would warm back up afterwards.

Yesterday I worked on the risers of my front porch steps that I made last year. I used dewaxed shellac on the risers because they looked so pretty that way. Dewaxed shellac is still in great condition on the covered, but open, porch on the beadboard siding and railing. It gets snow drifts up against it for weeks at a time and has held up well for many years. But not so the steps. But I knew this going in. For one thing, the pressure-treated wood was still a bit green when I applied it. Shellac is not meant for outdoors but I thought it being a vertical surface it would hold up and just need to be recoated each spring. The shovels edges, ice and snow, and most of all-all that salt that has to be applied on the steps a few times every day during the winter, took its toll.

I tried scraping the peeling parts off. My arms were too tired and the position is so awkward working on the steps. My knee has been bothering me for a few weeks and squatting down was painful. I took out the Peel Away 6 can and just applied it to the risers. The steps themselves are painted in a latex paint.

I peeled off the stripper with my card scraper and then applied ammonia to finish off any left-over shellac and hosed it all down. One thing I hate about latex paint. It gets dirty and doesn’t wash off. The old oil paints used to come clean. Latex acrylic is just like dirty old rubber. I’ll need to recoat the paint, too. I gave a thought to putting some kind of urethane on top of the paint to keep it cleaner looking but it would make it slippery when wet and you really don’t want that on stairs.
I’m going to use a water-based stain in a fumed-oak color on the risers. Then I’ll coat it with spar urethane because that part is not stepped on so I don’t have to worry about whether it would be slippery or not.

• Today I will take off the molding trim I applied between the risers and the treads, fill in the gaps first with that spray foam insulation. I don’t want room for water to get behind the molding and sit there. After that cures and if there is time, I’ll sand the risers down to bare wood and stain.