ZipperJJ
Good idea. There is a Sherwin Williams pretty close by. I have never seen anyone there, and always assumed it was a front for something. But it has been there for years, so if it IS a real store, I will stop by this week and see what they say.
I have always heard good things about their paints… They are expensive, but good quality. I think there is also an independent Benjamin Moore shop on the other side of town, too.
I don’t think the new PT is going to take much stain. I doubt you can get the new and old boards to match for quite a while. Talk to the Sherwin Williams guys. They don’t get a lot business in the day, you’ll see them busy early mornings on weekdays with painting contractors picking up supplies.
Maybe the answer is to not use pressure treated wood?
If I am going to sell the house in less than 2 years, perhaps I should go this route, so when I stain the deck, the old boards will not stand out from the new ones.
If we stay, I can always rip up the deck at once and replace all boards at the same time, and use the same type of product.
I will speak with the SW guys, but anyone know if there is a wait time with new, untreated wood? I can set them outside for a month or so and still get the deck finished before October, however if I have to wait longer, I may just go with the pressure treated and leave them unstained until next spring.
I hate to use a product that I know is just not the best option, but I am stuck in a bad spot with the deck right now. If I did it correctly, I would remove all boards and replace it with the synthetic wood. Right now, I want to make it safe, and make it look as nice and as uniform as possible.
SFP there are different levels of treated wood. Call the place you bought it from and ask them.
I was told one year on mine.
Will do.
I only saw two types of deck wook. One looked like untreated pine if various lengths, and one looked like “Wolmanized” wood (not sure if thst term is used any longer." But that is what I bought, and it is pressure treated.
I will just go there and ask someone to tell me what choices they have, and explain what I want to do.
I was told my original deck was either redwood or cedar. Now, I admit I know little about wood, and what kind it was. It didn’t smell like cedar, and redwood seemed like an expensive option. However, it looked like a blond wood with red streaks in it, which were the growth rings cross-cut. But I am guessing it was new pine.
You make be right…perhaps no matter what wood I buy, I may have to wait a season before staining. I will ask.
Thanks.
You can stain non-treated wood right away, it will be kiln dried. You can make this a lot easier if you just replace all the decking. Whether you stain it this year or next year, or use synthetic wood, it’s going to look better if you sell and last longer if you don’t. I know it’s going to cost more than what you were planning but it will be worth it for those reasons.
You don’t have to replace the rails, posts, or any stairs if they’re in good shape. It will also give you a chance to examine the joist tops underneath the decking. That’s where you can find a lot of hidden rot. Minor surface rot can be treated with resins so you don’t have to replace them.
Synthetic wood requires the least maintenance, pressure treated will give you the longest life with little or no maintenance, but loses it’s looks over time without treatment. Regular wood requires more maintenance. Any pine product will be susceptible to rot without regular treatment. Harder varieties like redwood will last a little longer, cedar even longer. For natural and pressure treated wood you can make short work of the job with a rented nail gun. I’m not sure what’s recommened for fastening synthetic wood.
Yeah, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the master plan.
I hate doing things half-assed, but it is hard to justify the cost of replacing the entire deck with only three bad boards, and those boards are only bad in a certain section, so I can cut those out and replace them with good wood. (Good wood… Heh)
The problem is the cost. I have a fairly large deck, and to replace all of the “floor” wood would be a significant difference. My deck is in pretty good shape, actually. And if I did what I had originally intended (which was to use that deck “coating” or “paint” that would cover the wood completely, including the grain, new boards and old boards would look the same.
But based on the reviews I’ve read on-line and in this thread, I think going with an oil-based stain makes the most sense. However, doing that makes the new boards stand out, which will bother me.
I will have to measure out the deck and run the numbers to see if I can justify the added expense to my budget. AFAIK, the deck’s substructure is fine, and the railing is also perfect, so I will only have to do the floor.
<sigh>
I know most people would just insert new, cheap boards and cover it with the dark paint/coating material, and think this thread is ridiculous, but I need to be happy with the final result.
I appreciate the feedback!
You could just replace the 3 boards, stain the rest of the deck and be done with it. If you need to sell you can replace all the decking with synthetic at any time of the year.
I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to replace just a couple of boards. My deck has a few repairs of that sort. If I look for them, I see the difference, but it doesn’t jump out at me and make itself known.
Can you pull up the bad boards and pull up 3 old boards to put in their spot, from an inconspicuous place, then put the new boards in the inconspicuous place? Like I’ve always got furniture in the same spot on my deck so I could “hide” 3 boards under there.
Just got back to this… Life has a way of interrupting my projects!
No, I can’t move the boards around. I have replaced the boards and now I am mulling over what to to.
The only product that seems to cover the wood with the same color is the Olympic brand “restore it”. I spoke to my neighbor and he used this product last year, and he is using it again on the areas where it peeled. I think he’s just trying to make the deck look as uniform as possible.
He told me that he called Olympic after it peeled on him this spring, and they refunded all of his money, and didn’t even require so much as a picture. I have also read on-line that Olympic’s customer service is very good at getting people their money back on this stuff, so it must be fairly common to request a refund.
It almost makes me want to give it a try… Almost. One of the themes of the reviews is that it is almost impossible to get off if you want to remove it. So, when it inevitably peels, you have to either re-do the application (like my neighbor), or replace the decking.
I wonder why this product is such a disaster? My grandparent’s house was covered with wood, and whatever paint was used always looked fine.
I am hoping to finally get to the Sherwin Williams store this week and see what they say.
I wish I could just wait until next spring, but the old wood is stripped and ready to be stained. I don’t think the wood would make it through a winter without some protection.
I can’t believe August is over already. <sigh>
I forgot I never finished this thread with a final post, so for anyone following it, I figured it is the least I could do, especially for those who offered advice.
I ended up going with a Sherwin Williams product. It was pretty expensive, (about $50/gallon), but I bought it at the end of the season at a 40% discount, so it worked out to be in line (price-wise) with other stains I had on my list.
I went with a solid stain, and put 2 coats on. It took the better part of 3 full days of work (I did it in October, and got very lucky with the weather).
I did all the prep, replaced any questionable boards, and was looking for a product that would not show any differences in the age of the wood. This SW product was a home run on that requirement. However, two coats was a must. One coat just didn’t give the overall, uniform look I wanted, but that second coat did wonders.
I also paid extra for a couple of things from SW. First, they had a LOT of color choices, but they had 3 pre-mixed colors. I chose on of the pre-mixed options, and it was a great decision. Unless you order a 5-gallon bucket, you would have to mix the gallons together at the deck to guarantee you have a uniform color. With the SW pre-mix, I didn’t have to worry about that at all. Also, the color will most likely be available for a long time. Finally, the pre-mixed color had a UV-protectant mixed into it (I think this was available in some of the other mixable colors, but not positive). This added a few dollars to each gallon of stain.
I applied it with a brush and a roller, and that is THE LAST time I will ever do that. My deck is brutal with the number of spindles that hold up the railing, and I must have blocked out the pain involved the last time I did this job. Either that, or the last time I stained the deck I used a transparent stain, so maybe it went on more easily. I don’t remember. But putting this on with a brush for 80% of the time was just awful. It looks great, so if it survives the winter intact, I have no complaints. Just never again.
To spray the deck, it would have taken me a LONG time to cover everything for overspray, but I can’t imagine it would have taken me nearly the amount of time it took to stain the deck with a brush/roller. So if you have not made a final choice and are holding off until spring, I highly recommend finding a sprayer you can use for deck stain.
As for my initial reaction to the finished product, I have to say I am very pleased. It has been over a month since I applied it, and it looks great. The thing about solid stain that I was worried about was not much of the wood grain would show through. That is true, but enough of it does. The deck still looks like wood (not plastic or some man-made decking product) and it does NOT fill in gaps like some of those deck “restore” products. It has a very rich, deep, uniform color and you can still see some variations in the wood itself.
I also used a wood filler in a few areas where I needed to fill a hole or crack in the wood (used very sparingly, over a few boards), and after sanding, the stain covered these areas nicely. I know where they are so I can see them, but I doubt anyone over for a visit would see any flaws without really looking.
If I remember, I will update this thread again in spring after the winter abuses it to see how the stain holds up. With all of the class action lawsuits on the deck restore products, I feel like I dodged a bullet with going in this direction. I actually purchased some of the Olympic Deck Restore (I think) because it was on sale and that was what I originally planned to use, but after reading this thread, doing some research, and talking to a relative who basically confirmed every nightmare story about the stuff, I took it back without opening it and never looked back. (As a funny story, at the end of summer, right before I finally focused in on the SW product, the 5-gallon restore products were being sold for $20. I think it was their “sell it or throw it out” sale. I am not sure, but my guess is you were buying it at that price with no rights to sue afterward, but I don’t know. All I do know is I paid over $90 for a 5-gallon bucket a couple of months before (and THAT was a sale price), so something must have been decided at the corporate level on that product.)
Anyway, I spent more than I had planned, but I am so far pleased with the results. (And so is the better half, which is always nice.) And my daughter picked the color we used so it was a family win all around!