Hello,
Just bought a house a few months ago and have been planning on cleaning and staining the 2 year old deck once the weather got a little nicer. The weather finally got nicer and I started cleaning it today. After doing some reading around here I have realized that I should have had a better plan as to the cleaning and staining timeline as well as what stain I am going to use.
First some details about the deck. I believe it is a pressure treated pine deck. It gets a decent amount of sunlight in the afternoon (some trees around it but not immediately shading it). I am in Minnesota so there will be plenty of weather extremes. Right now I am using a 2 in 1 cleaner from Home Depot (believe it is a Behr product). I have some experience from shop class in high school staining furniture but I have never done anything with a deck before...so my experience is a little on the low end.
Now for the questions. First off, what is the maximum time I can go between cleaning the deck and applying stain? Secondly, I have been reading about my stain options and there are a lot of them out there. I am thinking I want something more transparent and less solid. Initially I was looking at a Olympic Toner at Lowes but as I have been reading it seems there are a lot of quality products that are sold not at your local big home improvement stores (I was reading about Wood Tux). Looking for recommendations...
Thanks!
