bigchaz

You can help the wood turn gray (use baking soda and water) but unless you can hyper expose the wood to the equivalent of years of ultraviolent light, dozens of cycles of thawing and freezing, tens of thousands of gallons of dirty rain and snow, miles worth of foot traffic and somehow change the pressure treating process that is different today than it was even 5 years ago there's no way they will be the same :) Doing a full cleaning on the deck, followed by a brightener and using a semi transparent stain should give you plenty enough of a match color wise. The texture of the wood will certainly be different and if one portion of the deck was not maintained the cracks and splits will still only be on that portion of the deck even if you painted the entire thing you would still see that. Set the customer expectations on this one but its been long enough where you can get a good match by stripping the entire thing and staining it

Lol sounds like my first day....pull trailer out night before....don't see the weather all the lines freeze. Break both starter coords (main and backup machine) while attempting to start machines in customers driveway. Stripper sitting on deck with no way to pressure wash off. Explain to homeowner reason for having to drive home (1 hour away) to repair machines. Find out realtor is coming in 2 hours to photograph house for website. Deck is night black at this point from stripper sitting on it. That was 2 months ago...first day suck...it'll get better though!

When you say you are working on it what does that entail? Do you want to strip it? Looks pretty good to me already, is the customer asking for something in particular?

Lemme preface by saying this is my opinion, I should have mentioned that earlier of course. It could be my application method but I didn't care for it Scott. I tried a gallon last year from the lumberyard on some misc PT wood a customer had (bench, shed ramp, planter, and picnic table iirc). I dont know all the technical terms that well but I did have to be careful about lap marks, it took a while to dry well (i do two coats one light, one heavy wet on wet) and maybe it was bad application but it seemed like it flashed quick on the first coat in the hot sun which kept that second coat from getting good penetration and hence slowed down its drying time.

I don't do cedar but I would suspect that you may have had an issue with sawdust from taking so much off. Even blowing it off you probably still had some ground into the grain. And because you basically exposed brand new wood it may have benefited from allowing time (a few months) for the wood to age again and then doing a cleaning, pressure washing, and brightening treatment before putting the stain down

Stay away from Behr, Thompsons, Olympic Solids, any Deckscapes semi trans or tran products. If he is getting it local, TWP (not the new 1500 series) or olympic max toner.

Did you clean the deck at all with any wood cleaners before or after the sanding?

Depends on what concentration of cleaner (and what type) you used

Just hit it with your housewash mix and rinse it off. If its a solid stain its not *likely* going to go anywhere. If it does take the solid off, tell the homeowner you did him a favor and now his deck might not rot off in 5 years

FYI when you're stripping the underside of a deck in the wind or leaning over the top rail of an elevated deck to wash the spindles coming toward you, you can see why a nice pair of rain bibs or jacket might be a bit helpful to keep your skin from peeling off

I've tried all the lightweight ones and they never held up....crotch always ripped. I have two pairs of these from Tractor Supply West Chester® Master Gear® Men's 50 mm PVC Overalls - 645977899 | Tractor Supply Company They are 50mm pvc, picked them up late last season but crotch is already torn in one and slowly getting worse on the other. Not sure what to look for as these were double seemed but the pvc itself tore (even with 50mm)

Hey Gerauld just saw your post, feel free to use it that's cool

Ken, a roof that large will require a significant amount of chemical, I don't know how much area x gallons of roof cleaner will cover as I don't do roofs, but you may need to make several trips to refill your SH. Figure out how much it will take to do a small roof (test on your own home) and measure up from there.

Haha I would pass on the Job Ken, or as other mentioned simply explain that you use industry standard and job specific cleaning detergents to achieve documented and professional results.

Doug, the good thing is Armstrong is manufactured in California and to California standards so it has met the 250 VOC requirement for over 10 years now so they are far ahead of most of us Southern states. In fact they switched to the low VOC even before it was required in California. I've never thinned it for deck work but I have added mineral spirits once or twice when doing really large fences. Obviously it decreases your longevity and lightens the color so I wouldn't recommend doing that regularly. Of course now a days the price of mineral spirits is so high anyway its not even worth it. I just use as is from the can.

Here's a picture of my first Armstrong Deck which is about 3 years old now. I took these pictures last summer when the deck was bout 2 year 2 months old. This deck gets full sun on the surface so the floor naturally could use a light maintenance coat, but as you can see from the railings and side view where the plants are there is no mildew here. Not sure if thats the proof you wanted Doug, but if you've never used AC, they'll gladly send you a free 5 gallon pail and I think you'll be more than pleased with mildew performance. I also spoke with Jake from Armstrong Clark since I wasn't entirely sure on the technicals earlier and hopefully it'll help clear some misconceptions up. If the original poster is still around I would say this, at the end of the day just about every major paint and stain manufacturer uses some form of linseed or vegetable oil in some of their products so don't buy into the mantra that linseed oil is inherently bad. I had to check with Jake on the timeline too but Armstrong is going on 11 years now with the SAME formula (with linseed!) so you can definitely be confident about standing the test of time. I doubt people will change their mind in another year, its one thing if a product constantly changes but myself and I'm sure others on here are going on 3-4 years now with the same stain. [ATTACH=CONFIG]16983[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]16984[/ATTACH]

Beth, are you using the ProVT solid or the oil based one? I used to use the Cabot ProVT for whites but it was doing really poor with mildew. No one sells the oil base cabot problem solver primer and solid color around here anymore and I don't enough jobs to stock it so the last few we've done were with Sherwin Williams Solid Color decking stain. The tint base is just a straight white or we do the navajo white for a more muted look. Pretty nice look

What made you come back around to washing? Not sure what type of washing you are doing, but you may be pleasantly surprised to know those telescoping wands are all but obsolete for house washing and most general purpose cleaning.

Yea I figured so just was surprised how tight the joints looked on beth's job. No cracking either

Beth do yall caulk your 4x4s and around all the spindles on your two tone jobs?

6 of one, half dozen of another. If you have a quality mildewcide you shouldn't have problem with mildew. If you are referring to AC doug, theres no "new" claims, just a product has been the same for many years. And true "assessing" comes in the field.

I make my lackeys hold the tarps up when I spray the fence....no lackeys this year so i guess its PVC time

Are you doing work already? If so and you have some equipment I would build the trailer from scratch. Granted i bought a cheap rig but you can start with a trailer, put what you have on there and continue to add as funds come in. I added something every couple months when I got around to to it and had the cash to buy it

Eh wish I had a better picture Tony...this is all I could find. This one we did the top of the board stained and the facing in white. I always do the white first so I can sand the top for a cleaner edge. I think it works OK on newer wood because the edge is still pretty crisp and hasnt worn away. Once it starts getting rounded and chipped its hard to get a clean line. You can see on the very top of this staircase and on the second turn as well as around the landing where the trim board is.

given that the gap between the two isn't the tightest its probably ever been, I would lean toward doing the tops white. Although I've done it both ways....I'm going to dig up some pictures and check