diff --git a/mackup/config.py b/mackup/config.py
index 97f140e..81a6044 100644
--- a/mackup/config.py
+++ b/mackup/config.py
@@ -220,7 +220,7 @@ class Config(object):

         # Python 2 and python 3 byte strings are different.
         if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
-            path = str(path)
+            path = path.encode("utf-8")
         else:
-            path = path.decode("utf-8")
+            path = str(path)