bigchaz

Mid-way through staining a playset when this thing came in.... On the plus side I guess business being slow means I have all week to finish one measly deck and a playset...if these afternoon storms would ever clear up

Tony, I've been toying with the dream to somehow do furniture and accessory sales for decks. Tons of people comment to me when the deck is resotored that they are putting the old grill or chairs in the trash and getting new ones since the deck looks so new. Haven't figured out how to execute that yet though. Not sure how profitable it would be

To me concrete is concrete...dirty or not its whatever. Completely changing to the look of a deck from gray and old to fully restored and seeing the customer beeming with joy...thats satisfying. I don't think you see that coming from a house wash job.

If I could kiss Jake Clark I think i would

Jon...so the waterbornes aren't user friendly and have bad results on a deck, the ones you have used have penetration problems, and you cursed off all oil stains....what the heck do you put on decks? I thought you wanted jaws to break...not diagonal lines where spindles are unevenly penetrated??

Shhh...I hear he's on step 8 of the recovery process to becoming a heterosexual male and overcoming addiction to his alternative lifestyle....hes got to amend past wrongs

Haha 21 now so its all legal...im not interested though Fife;)..sorry!! I don't see any reason this can't be fulltime and sustainable. As in fulltime doing only cleaning and staining....that's the after college plan for me anyway. Next year will be the first year I try this year round so itll be a good test...I can only roughly predict if it would be able to support a family. I did really well last year, working 4 day weeks for 3 months. Ill probably look for something in the winter months, or try to open a second business within the first two years if necessary.

Thankfully we were already packed, that was when driving away from the job

Guess for me it depends on the customer. Since i'm still on all the sites I can be flexible with this, might not work for most. If a customer is scared up and down about stain on their house and wanting everything covered, ill sell them on the fact that we put plastic up and tape and tarp everything. If that customer is home, Ill put up plastic. If the customer doesn't mention anything about masking, I just stain as usual and there is no stain on the house either way.

Thank God for Thompsons water seal.

I dont undrestand the point of that. I want as much stain on the wood as possible so why try and brush it all off right away? I only backbrush to keep any drips from forming and spread out the occasional puddles...I want the stain to stay on the wood so it soaks in.

Rick, Ive been using canvas ever since I started spraying stain so I understand your procedure I just never thought to replicate that for the stripping portion of the job. Hell I've got half a dozen 15 footers sitting in the shed. Glad you posted that picture, I love the idea. We don't tarp when spraying inward either, it just means more oil on the horizontals which is nice.

ugh not a change i can believe in

Hm I like that tarp idea. I see that you still have furniture on the deck surface...do you strip the railing and pressure wash before applying stripper to the floor? Do you tarp the house as well to prevent stripping the siding or are you hand brushing there as well? Sorry for all the questions, normally my method is fine but I nuked about 3 feet of grass around a deck last week because we were stripping a solid acrylic and the second that hot mix hits the grass it turns black. Took off the gutter paint too. We rinse vegetation with water every time but its pretty hard to stop a mix that strong. The customer was so happy about the deck she didnt mind the yard, but it looks like you might be on to something here

Ken can't you still backbrush fast without applying ridiculous pressure to the bristles. I dont want to wipe all the product off by brushing super hard I just want it to spread evenly over the surface. We just run the brush up and down on the spindles barely touching the wood

Rick are you guys applying stripper with a brush in that first picture?

Specialization Dan. We offer a specialized service for one thing and one thing only. It sells big time. Rich people don't have Home Depot put their carpet in, they use a carpet guy. They don't hire a lawn maintenance company to trim their trees, they hire an arborist. You have to find a niche, and market the crap out of it. Specializing is a way to separate yourself from the pack. Take fireman William for example. He could run circles around me doing decks, it takes him 2 seconds, boom bam and he's got his money. He also charges a 1/3 of what I would charge and says he doesnt even like to stain them. Its not competition at all because I'm making money on the $500,000 homes and above doing sanding, detail work, high quality stain, finish removal, etc, etc. And I've been saying this all along but I like that my customers are starting to agree you don't hire a painter to do your deck. Higher end clientele aren't stupid. They want the best of the best. I did a deck for a new construction home, and the builder was hammering them left and right to get the deck stained and protected. They called the painter out and called me out. Painter does really really good work, he painted the whole home and all the trim and it looks fantastic. They hired me to do the deck. Why? Because the homeowner liked the fact that I specialize in decks and that is all we do. I don't ever want to do housewashes. I don't feel like carrying tanks of housewash mixes, and I don't want to drive around all the time doing a whole lot of them. I'd much rather work on increasing my deck average and do less overall jobs. If I can stick with the 1500-2000 dollar decks that beats doing 5 houses anyday for me.

Why are you using so many brushes? If you have to order by the case you should be spraying. Think of the cost savings We use two inch white china bristle wooster brand for backbrushing spindles. Ive got maybe half a dozen brushes (2 inch to 6 inch) in a can. They will last for weeks if they don't dry out. Even if they do with Armstrong, just stretch it out a bit, dip it and they are good to go again. Brushes are expensive as crap I would hate to go through a ton of those

I've got a 20x10 deck with a 10x10 addition. (Rails are all new on the whole deck) Old part is 4 years old, moldy, gray, no stain. New deck is less than a week old. They know it will never match but is there anything I can do help this process? I'm not comfortable waiting a year while the old section gets even worse, and I don't see the point in cleaning only the floor on the old part while the rails and 100 sq foot additional surface have nothing. If you absolutely had to stain brand new pressure treated, what would you do to prep it? And how do I best blend with the old wood?

Awesome! What kind of floor sander do yall use?

I think Jons pics are a little messed up with the way the sun is hitting. I cant even tell which ones are before and after. Dan's looks about what it should when dry. Jon you sure that wasn't the sequoia?

Looks good. Do you not remove furniture when working?

This cedar well is at my parents house. Stained last year with woodtux brown sugar. Pic one (August 2008) Pic two/three (July 2009) Pic four/five (Today) Was stripped, washed, bleached, and brightened this time around. Lets hope the AC holds up a bit better.

Good strip job, but do you think you got all the mold off the bottom? color looks a little off on the after pic?? Maybe its my computer

Lost a bunch of pics in the fire and didnt get a new camera for a while but heres some Armstrong Clark shots that I scraped up off my computer. Finally got a camera but still have to drive around and get the old jobs photographed. Deck off a golf course below stained with Cedar-Semi Trans: