RPetry

Have a potential customer with a large, very well built ipe' deck completed last October. Wanted some various stains and color combinations on a few pieces of his scrap. Disregard color differences between the 2 ipe' boards, top one is much lighter in natural color. Ipe' "stripped" with 4 oz./gal. ACR 760 NaOH, citric acid at 6 oz./gal. and not rinsed, and lightly sanded at 60 grit with a random orbital. Single application of all stains with a natural bristle brush. Photo taken ~18 hours after stain application. top to bottom, left to right Top board 50/50 RS dark brown/RS dark red mix - "Diamond Jim Foley's" custom mix. Please do not ask. Bottom board RS medium red - RS light brown - straight WTW "warm honey gold"

Paul, I do not need any wood samples. We do have plenty of different hardwoods and softwoods to work on here in NJ. I reskinned my own personal deck in ipe' 4 years ago. I've had plenty of practice. Its not the first two months after staining, its the last two months before maintenance. That is the question with hardwoods.

Paul, I agree. First, I have no question about your work. You and a few others down South do some exceptional work on hardwoods. The real question is longetivity, maintenance, and what is best for the wood. Since ATO has fallen due to the VOC regs here in the Northeast, stains on woods such as ipe' are an opened ended question mark. I recently purchased a 5'er from ESI to play with. I will say that the consistancy and makeup of the stain is vastly improved over my last purchase nearly two years ago. That 5'er was awful. The WTW stain I received this week is powers of 10 better than my first purchase. No question that good hardwoods such as ipe' have individual board coloring and characteristics. Its the nature of the wood. Note the disclaimer in my first post. But honestly, you, myself, or a dozen other woodies could apply some HD bought Behr's on the wood, snap a photo, and the job would look great. The real test is the test of time, maintenance costs to customers, and if we can get a friggin' year out of our stains on wood such as ipe'. I'd go back to the old ATO in a heartbeat (aside from that lousy tung oil), but that is ancient history. The real question is, what's next?

Kevin, His 2nd deck contractor, built this one, not me. Installed ipe' 4 yrs ago on my own deck and knew beforehand to use carbide chop saw blades, drill bits, etc. This wood is one tough customer.

Kevin, Note that the pics are only 18 hrs. after stain application. Give these ipe' boards a few weeks outside in the sun and the "true" colors will be evident. Ipe' is rock hard, and takes little oil compared to redwood. One thing in common is they both have literal tons of natural resins or tannins(?) or extractives in the wood. Never did figure out those things, slept through college chemistry.

Woodies, enjoy these last few goiden oil years while you can. The environmentalist wackos will be shoving water based exterior wood stains down everyones throats in the next decade. The only claim to fame is that you were a dying craftsman in a idiotic time.

Ken conveniently tells only one side of the story. He says: And further insults with: Last time I invite you over to bid on my ipe' deck. You know, cobblers kids have no shoes... Geeze, the nerve. Guy pulls up in a cherry '72 Eldorado with diamond rings big as rocks. 3 piece suit on a hot day. Near has my wife drooling with desire, moon eyes big as saucers. Friggin' salesmen! Hah!Nice sales run. Get it while you can, August is not that far away!

Keith, Shane's suggestion is a keeper. If you are just starting out, make sure to take before and after pictures of wood jobs. Assemble your best photos into an album you can take on estimates to show customers your portfolio of work and different RS colors on different types of wood. I started out using Wolman's F&P but quickly changed over to RS. Pretty much due to my taste, slightly "pushed" or "nudged" my customers towards Ready Seal medium red over the past 4 years. Especially on PT or older cedar, still my personal favorite color. If you go to the web site on my signature line and select "Photo galleries", many of the completed pictures are RS med. red on cedar, PT, and redwood. Natural cedar is my second personal choice, and second with my customers. Think it looks better on Western Red Cedar than PT. Light brown can also look great on cedar, especially newer cedar. Completed an old cedar deck recently, that had to be stripped, with this color but have not gotten back to the neighborhood to take final pics. This lighter color can be a bit more difficult with older wood, especially if only parts of the deck get full sun, but can still be make to look great. I'll post a pic here if I remember. Like Israel in the post above, a 50/50 mix of dark brown and dark red can also look great, especially on hardwoods such as mahogany and ipe'. There is a recent thread here on TGS with this mix and photos on an ipe' handrail. Search for "Oxalic Citric" in the thread title. Show pics during the estimate to get a feel for what the customer wants. If they are undecided, try this. After brightening, get an old hairdryer out of your truck and let it dry a small area of floor while you are packing up. Before you leave, apply 3 or 4 small stain samples to the wood and take a picture. Send them an email along with the pic, describing for example, "From left to right, light brown, medium brown, natural cedar, medium red" and where the samples are located on their prepared wood. Works for me for those "picky" customers.

Matt, Not to throw gas on the fire, but Ken has some valid points. Some contractors here in certain areas really seem to get slammed by quick buck part time handymen going door to door. Funny, I have a "broke" college kid from the University of Michigan working for me this season. Maybe you could get a job with a real, professional pressure washing company for this season and at least learn the trade from an experienced, established pro.

Heard of Jatoba, but have never seen it. Pulled this off a furniture manu's website: If true, I would guess you would not want to install it on a 2nd story deck over a patio or pavers. Paul, do you have a picture of the wood dry?

Jeff, That is a real nice color, especially for PT. Too bad the deck builder butchered the cuts on the floor boards.

Over the past few months there has been some debate on open expression and sharing information here on TGS. I subscribe to the "open source" model of software and ideas. You cannot stop it, its the new way of the world. From the New York Times website this morning.

Ditto on the Hydrotek. Their PW's are built to last.

Geeze Greg, Your pictures burned my retinas. Never needed sunglasses to look at a web site. What did you use, bottled sunshine? Fence looks great, knock 'em dead with the stain.

Celeste, Good god, that sounds bad. Why?

Fred, Back in 2002, started in this business using Wolman's F&P, almost all staining with the, I think, "natural" color. This past Friday, lightly stripped a deck with that same Wolman's on it since 2002. PT and mostly in shade. What surprised me is the amount of pigment still left on the vertical wood. The linseed oil itself was long gone for moisture protection and the horizontal deck floor was pretty faded, but the spindles, fascia, and exposed joist still had quite a bit of color. Some mildew, but not bad at all considering over 4 years without cleaning or restaining. Have no idea of the stain now due to VOC changes.

Daniel, Hah! Dead right on. I wrote my senior paper at the University of Denver 32 years ago calibrating N2O levels verses friggin' sunlight levels! Geeze, everyone with basic chemistry and climatology knew the relationship back then. Now its the carbon tradeoff. Just plant more trees! You think its bad now, just wait. These extreme environmentalist idiots have got the press and congress by the nose hairs.

Jon, This could be good news. Care to describe "looked kind of funny"? Did you use sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to strip and in what concentration? What type of wood and how long was the stain on the wood before stripping? Thanks.

Hey Ken, Hah! I'd have to think long and hard to stomach staying in this business if oil based stains were banned. But I'm afraid we may see it sometime in the future, especially here in the Northeast.

Might not be wise to burn any bridges with Flood. If the environmental extremists and VOC police get their way, we may all be forced to used water based exterior wood stains sometime in the not too distant future. And I guess Flood makes some of the better water based stains.

Mark, 1. Of the three you listed, a shurflo would be best. RS has the viscosity just a hair thicker than water. 2. I do not think so. But their manufacuring plant is in the Ft. Worth area, so shipping quickly should not be a problem. Call them tomorrow. 3. Maybe the Old Farmers Almanac should be consulted.

Jarrod, Hasn't been easy in NJ either. Very strange April. Started stripping and cleaning wood on 3/30, only to stop about 5 days later. April comes in like a lion, low to mid 40 daytime highs and below freezing many nights. Had to wrap the pumps with blankets, hoping they would not freeze up. Had a backlog of wood ready to stain, but could not start until 4/19. We finally got caught up with staining on 4/26, working like dogs with the first good weather of spring. Snuck a few prep jobs in and hope to get those stained in the next few days. Rained all day this past Friday, and was glad to see it. Was beat as a dog, and even my college kid helper needed a break. Not so much the expected rain here in April, it was the very low temperatures that made this a strange start to the wood season.

Jeff, I bought a new 2007 Ford E250 extended van last month. Sticker was $27,400, got them down to $24,600. The deal maker was the financing. Ford credit is (was?) basically giving money away to make deals. 2.9% for 60 months. Financed the whole thing, aside from tax and tags. It just did not make sense to buy anything used. Check out the extended E250 vans. The 18" increase in body length makes a big difference, it has a lot of space for a van. With the 5.4L engine, you can pull a pretty good size trailer.

Ken, Funny how different one's experiences can be. I live in a townhouse community. Kind of fell into this business years ago after I restored my own deck. Neighbors started asking me to service their wood, and the business grew from there. To this day, I always have a signed contract detailing labor cost, sales tax, estimated materials costs, and scope of services, in hand before I start any job. My wife and I are going out to dinner tonight with our next door neighbors. We have both lived here for 18 years and are good friends. We will be maintaining their small deck later this season. They will have a contract for the job, just like all customers. Business is business, whether customers are friends, relatives, neighbors, or new prospects. You can separate regular life from business practice and it can work.

Scott, You posted: I think I understood, just did not completely agree. There are many web sites where a homeowner can learn to do just about any type of maintenance or trade work, from building a new house to doing a complete kitchen renovation. Has this put building contractors out of business? I sympathize with Christopher's one experience. Not pleasant. I had something not too different happen to me last year regarding RS stain as opposed to WTW. But it was an educated customer and after fully explaining the differences between the two products and why I use RS, sold the job. All in all, I would rather deal with an educated customer. If its a DIY'er, coming here to learn, more power to 'em. Makes my job easier the next time when many will hire out. At least the wood may have been prepped and stained correctly. The upside is the jobs I have booked in the past few years, where local customers have found me due to my location on my signature line. Will be starting a large cedar restoration the 2nd week in May from a "guest" here on TGS. My contention is that due to this great tech innovation of the internet, information is now easy to get and its a wonderful revolution. It has helped my business and myself personally in so many ways.