I did a bunch of research here and elsewhere before staining our newly built cedar deck, so first thanks for all the contributors to the site for the helpful info. Now onto my issue....
I'm located in Long Island, NY. We had the deck built in Feb. It finally warmed up around here so I sprayed down the deck with water, then oxiclean (3 scoops into 3 gallons of water), let it sit for about 10 min, and then scrubbed the deck down with a stiff nylon deck brush. When I was scrubbing there was definitely some wood pulp coming up, which I assumed was normal for new wood. I let the deck dry for 4 days. When it was totally dry I noticed that there was furring between some of the grains....I assumed this was normal too so I left it there. I put down 2 coats of ReadySeal light brown (1hr between coats). It looked pretty awesome but there were some splotches throughout the whole thing. It's been 3 days and the splotches are still there. I tried scraping at one with my fingernail and I am able to scrape up some gooey material (pulp + stain???) and the underlying wood is light colored compared to the surrounding wood.
Overall the deck looks pretty good so I'm not worried about the aesthetics, instead I'm more concerned about people getting this gooey stain on the bottoms of their shoes and tracking it around the house. It doesn't feel tacky to the touch, but if it is scraped at it comes up. If I leave it alone will it eventually dry out or is it something I need to address? And if I need to address it, what course of action should I take? And lastly, did I make an obvious error that caused this to happen in the first place?
Thanks in advance.
