That should be fine. Good price too. We use Behr just because it is sold at the local box store and we get good results.
I’m sure the same store they will carry the pads too.
I’m seconding the pump sprayer. When you say its bad for your wrists it makes me think your thinking of a different product.
The type I’m talking about is the multi gallon pesticide type sprayer. Spray it heavy and back-roll to even the stain.
It get lots of coverage really quickly with minimal work
Mayhap I **am **thinking of the wrong thing - can someone provide a link?
Wouldn’t an electric power sprayer (like the ones sold by Wagner) be easier than a manual one?
If you get one with a large enough tank. Some of them you will spend a lot of time refilling. Unless you have some skill in using a paint sprayer, you’ll still want to use a pad or roller to smooth things out. You can probably rent a high capacity sprayer that will do the job well.
I’ve done quite a bit of staining. Here’s some *general *advice which may or may not be applicable to your specific application:
-
Make sure wood is clean. I use DeckBrite™ to clean wood. I apply it with a garden sprayer, and then wash it off using a Karcher electric power washer. (Do not use a high-powered washer w/ gas engine to clean wood; use a small electric one, which has much less pressure.)
-
If it is softwood, do not apply the stain first - apply a wood conditioner first. If you apply the stain directly to bare softwood, it will soak in too much and look terrible. If it is hardwood, you don’t need to apply a wood conditioner.
-
Apply the stain. With some stains, you need to wipe off the excess with a rag after you apply it. With others you don’t. As for the color of the stain, use the darkest you can stand. The darker it is, the longer it will last.
-
Apply a clear sealer over the stained wood.
This is the kind of pad I’m talking about.
http://www.shurline.com/PRODUCTS/SHURLINEPads/tabid/353/Default.aspx
Our neighbours did a poor job staining their fence for themselves. Their big mistake was in overlapping the areas of stain between dips of the brush, such that you can see this amorphus, ultra-dark stripe at right around shoulder height where that part of each board accidentally got two coats of stain. Stain is trickier than paint in that regard.
That being said - Crafter_Man’s advice is sound, and you’re smart. Have a go.
At the risk of asking a stupid question, are we talking about bare wood here? If the fence and deck is already painted and the paint has to be stripped off before being stained, then that might justify the high estimate.
Agree.
If it’s currently painted, I would not stain it. I would continue to paint it.
The vibration would kill my wrists as I suffer from tendinitis in both. I used a weed whacker one day and cost myself a week of using my hands for much.
Good to remember, thank you! I’ll be cautious not to overlap, that makes perfect sense when it comes to stain.
The deck’s had clear sealant sprayed on it ~3 years ago and the fence is entirely untreated.
If your tendinitis is that bad, this much staining might be too much for you.
I’m anticipating doing it the same way I painted the inside of the house - concerted effort to use my elbow instead of my wrist to bend my arm, switch between left and right hands often, don’t overdo the amount of product on the roller at once and take all the time I need. Ice and ibuprofen are my friends; I still have half my life to go, I can’t give in now!
Then, IMO, you’re not going to have success staining the deck.
Whatever you do apply, be that paint, stain, or more sealant, needs to be chemically compatible with whatver was applied last time. As a rule of thumb, stain goes on raw wood, period.
And, as noted above all the wood, treated or otherwise will need some prep. Cleaning, perhaps sanding, removing any scaly sealant, etc.
$2K for 2 days’ work by a pro sounds high. Unless he’s talking about a crew of 3 and 6 man-days. For somebody with weak hands, this much manual labor sounds like a recipe for problems. Whatever number of man-days the pro(s) estimate, double or triple it for amatuer workers (like me or you).
You don’t really have “all the time you need.” you need to get any given area done at one swell foop or else you’ll get color lines. And once the area is power washed, it starts getting dirty again. And you can’t re-power wash freshly stained areas. So you might be able to tackle each straight run of fence separately, and do them separately from the deck. But you can’t do the deck itself spread over 4 weekends.
Agree. Once you power wash it, the clock is ticking, primarily due to UV rays from the sun. The UV rays immediately start damaging the bare wood. This is why a dark stain works best… the darker the stain, the more effective it is at blocking the UV rays.
I wish I had more than this to keep me busy but I don’t - I’ll be on it each day, no other job, once the power-wash is done. I’ll take all the great advice I’ve been given here and do the very best I can. I may even reconsider whether I want to stain or paint it; a neighbor’s painted his and it looks nice yet natural. We shall see! Thank you to everyone for their input, I knew this was the place to go for real-world advice.
Didn’t Tom Sawyer have a technique like this?
My problem is to get the wood dry enough that stain or paint will stick. Only the summer season is warm enough, and getting several days in a row of bright sun to dry out the deck is nigh-impossible. A second deck never gets any sun, so it is even worse.
We don’t have that trouble here in GA, happily, which is why I no longer live in Michigan! 
Honestly, stain does not work that well on outdoor wood. (Works *great *indoors.)
With stain, the idea is that you want to see the wood grain, right? Well if *you *can see it, it means the *sun *can see it too. 
For outdoor wood, paint rules. If you stain, you must understand that you’re setting yourself up for a lot of work on a routine basis…