Roger Collier

I built a deck in my backyard five years ago and have been slowly ruining it ever since. I'm not trying to wreck it, of course. Everything I do to it is an attempt at improvement. It's just that each attempt fails.

But you can learn a lot from failure. You can learn about patience, about accepting your limitations and, most of all, about how to swear out of earshot of children (enter bathroom, close door, activate fan, commence swearing).

You would think that building a deck is harder than staining one. I no longer think that. I built my deck over a two-week period without any trouble. It's not perfect, but it's flat, sturdy and sort of deck-shaped.

Besides, it's only two feet off the ground, so a collapse wouldn't be catastrophic. Guests can rest assured that barbecues at the Collier home won't result in grievous bodily harm -- externally, at least. I make no promises about my wife's cooking.

The first of many mistakes I made in staining the deck was choosing the wrong colour. I thought I picked a reddish-brown stain. It turned out to be a reddish-red stain. While applying it, I kept telling myself that it would look different when it dried. Well, it did dry. And it looked like ketchup.

When my wife checked out the end result, I could tell she thought it looked terrible. I could see it in her face. I could also hear it in her words, which formed a sentence along the lines of: "That looks terrible."

The red stain had to go, so I rented a pressure washer to blast it off, which is when I made my second mistake. I didn't select the right setting on the tool. It got the stain off, sure, but also damaged the surface of the wood. Oh, and I accidentally "washed" the screen door with a high-pressure burst of water. The resulting holes allowed any insect smaller than a cat to enter our kitchen.

I then went out and bought more stain, this time a dark brown. It looked great on the deck. But it was a solid stain, meaning it just sat on the surface of the deck and didn't penetrate the wood. As I learned the following spring, this type of stain is prone to peeling. The deck looked like a redhead's shoulders after a sunburn.

The harsh winter had removed half the stain for me. I borrowed a hand-held electric sander from my neighbour to remove the rest. It was a tough job that took several weeks to finish. I managed to somehow break the sander and had to buy my neighbour a new one, but at least the deck was bare again and ready for more stain.

This time I went with a semi-solid stain, which is supposed to penetrate wood. I figured this kind wouldn't peel. What I would learn, however, is that even penetrating stains remain on the surface if they dry too quickly. Like, say, if you applied it in the middle of a bright, hot summer day. Which is exactly what I did.

When the snow on the deck melted the following spring, half the stain was gone. Again. After a quick visit to the bathroom to, ah, clear my throat, I considered my next move. I decided to just stain it as it was to cover the bare spots. It looked fine for the summer but, the next spring, was once again a patchy, peely mess.

This summer I sanded the deck again. Instead of going to a big-box store to get more stain, I went to a specialty paint store for some expert advice. The lady there recommended a linseed oil-based stain designed to withstand harsh weather and, even better, was guaranteed not to peel. I'm hopeful, but skeptical. We'll see come spring if this stuff actually stays down.

You might think that the lesson I learned from all this is to better prepare before jumping into a project. But no, that's not it at all. I learned to accept that I'm a trial-and-error kind of guy.

Yes, that means I'll make more mistakes than meticulous-planner types -- and make more work for myself in the long run -- but mistakes aren't so frustrating when you accept them as part of the process. A little frustration isn't such a big deal, anyway, as long as you have a moment to vent, the patience to try again and an empty bathroom with a loud fan.