We just bought a house. It has a two level deck that has been painted barn red at some point. We even think it might have just been painted with barn paint, but we're really not sure. The paint was peeling pretty extensively and the boards are pretty old and there is a lot of cracking, especially in the handrails. The deck still feels solid but it will be due for being replaced not too far down the line. For now we just want to repaint it. We were just going to use the Behr Deckover we saw HD but checking out the reviews they are awful. We know if you paint you're going to get a little peeling but you'd hope you could just touch up in spots and not have to completely redo on a yearly basis, and if it's going to peel anyway we definitely don't want to use the more expensive "restore" paint!

Below are some pictures of the deck. We pressure washed it this last weekend and were hoping to paint it this weekend. We have no desire to try to strip the remaining paint, maybe if we thought it could be refinished to like new but that doesn't seem to be the reality. So two questions:

1) Is there a paint type or brand you recommend?

2) Would a solid deck stain work over the remaining paint?

I haven't decided an exact color, but I'd rather paint it a brown rather than barn red again, though the house is white with a dark red trim already so it works. (At some point I hope to change the trim/shutter colors to a grayish blue, so something that would coordinate with that would be good but sadly the deck will probably be replaced before we get around to new house trim colors).

Upper Deck

Lower Deck