More Deck Maintenance - and a few other repairs

The other post about staining the deck is here:  However a lot more work was needed.

The deck furniture has been sheltered from the weather by the roof, but it still gets a good soaking once in a while when it's windy and raining/snowing.  So I set about refurbishing it.

This is a glider rocker that I've removed the wood slats from.  The color doesn't match the other furniture, and the previous wood treatment was getting pretty weathered.  Click any image to enlarge.

Sanding off the old finish and water stains.

I was trying to figure out how to paint the screws without painting the threads and gumming them up.  After a while I figured I could drill a bunch of holes in a paper plate, and just spray the heads.

Underneath, I sprayed the threads with WD-40 penetrating oil to help reduce corrosion.  I suppose I could have run them across the wire wheel to remove corrosion.

It turned out pretty well.  It's not perfect, but it's good enough for me.

I spray painted all the other furniture.  It was all showing mild surface corrosion and the paint was getting oxidized and gray.  Then we bought a mat to keep it from scuffing the new finish on the deck.  I'm hoping the creases relax, now that the mat is out of its packaging

I'm a charcoal guy.  The large cannister at the left is full of charcoal and newspaper for lighting.  I use the chimney below the grill to start the coals.  On a couple of occasions, a burning charcoal briquette has fallen onto the deck as I dump them out of the chimney.  I bought a fire-proof mat so that I don't burn the deck any more.

On a whim, we purchased some LED rope lights for the deck a few years ago.  I never took the time to put them up until today.  Now I know why:  It took several hours and I was sweating the entire time.

Kinda looking forward to seeing how these look at night.

Edit:  Here we go, at twilight.

We weren't very good about planting this spring - we just bought a few hanging baskets and called it good.  But now we have some black-eyed susan and petunias planted.  This is better!

We replaced the fence for the dog pen.  The old fence was *really* cheap and falling apart.  The fence posts were stamped sheet metal, and they were all bent.  The fencing was particularly flimsy and got bent when snow piled up on it.  These posts are solid steel.  I cut them off at the level of the fence after driving them in.  The fence material is really robust, and will be able to take some abuse.

Another issue with the previous fence:  It was down inside the curb on the grass.  I couldn't weed-whack the grass without also damaging the fence.  This fence sits on top of the curb, so lawn maintenance should be much easier.  The two end sections accordion out of the way for easy mower access.