plainpainter

Just finished a big semisolid mountain cedar job....

Jon - when I saw the pics, I realized the booboo I made. But on the other hand Scott Paul showed some pics of either ipe or mahogany with messmers at the 2 yr. mark. And even though he was going to strip it - I thought it looked good enough to maintain.

God - what a scam product!

If they guy isn't local - I don't know why folks get so upset - that said, contact google - they'll throw him in google 'hell'. And that's worth more than all the litigation in the world - ultimately we are abiding by Google laws now - they rule. Frankly I would love if my competition would copy me - because into Google hell they would go, and that would get rid of my competition's ability to advertize online.

Now if only that grateful customer was 30 years younger - Cricket would be really happy!

Charlie - I went back to a pressure treated deck that I did in brown sugar two years ago this coming sept/oct. This was a month ago - the job was beautiful upon completion - when I went back I never seen such a black tar'd looking thing in my life. I left an estimate for a 'maintenance' - for the life of me I don't know why I did - she hasn't called back and I am glad. I told her the price to 'strip' next year - I hope she waits until then. I have another that's in a far away town I would love to look at just for giggles. But I think my 'maintenance' business has been wiped clean for this year. I only have one deck that is maintainable - and that was the one deck I tried a local company's product, California Paints. It's faded but definitely maintainable - glad I tried another product back in '07. We've all been bamboozled! Charlie a certain 'Pressure Pro' has a convincing arguement that wtw has Acrylic in it - perhaps that's why it was a hard strip? I know from experience - I have these cut up logs from a fallen pine tree that I made into an arrangement in a rock garden. And when I came home from a job I'd throw the remainder stain on those cut stumps/logs {they're standing upright} and the next year the wood tux was peeling away from the tops in large sections like saran wrap! And this is END GRAIN on Soft weathered pine to boot!!!!! LOL!

Jon - you are just starting to come to this conclusion???? I've been seeing an atrocious amount of mildew for some time - and I was hoodwinked into believing a coating can't prevent mildew growth. Off the shelf stains I used 8 years ago didn't support such mildew growth. The only product I am using this year is A.C.

Charlie - I thought you said that your woodtux work was fine? That looks like a disaster similar to mine I've seen in the last year. Thank god for A.C.

Beth I am not literally talking about applying deck stains to fine furniture pieces. I am just saying all this talk about the perfect combination of deck staining procedure is pretty worthless, imo. These are decks for crying out loud. If a stain looks fairly decent at the two year mark - I think we've accomplished our goals. If woodtux didn't darken - some of my work after two years is perfectly acceptable for New England Weather. I ain't going to start second guessing A.C. now - customers will get wet-on-wet coats on the horizontals - and I will call it a day. There ain't no magic to this business. We stain 'em - and people pay us - and hopefully they'll pay us again in a couple years down the road. My professionalism stems from the fact that I use low pressure - ph balance - and sand/defur my work. As well as using a quality product that is better than off the shelf stuff at paintstores and big box stores - after that I think people may think we're lunatics if we start going into pre-treatments of parafinnics and/or multiple trips back to subsequently coat a deck. I think for the most part - folks want us out of the hair.

This all sounds like too much work. Two coats of A.C. wet on wet is as far as I will go. These are just decks not Smithsonian period type furniture..

This is about the point I hop off the 'woodie' train to the 'I really don't care' stop. Jim - A.C. stain is a composite of both Mineral Oil and Siccative type oils such as linseed and tung. Why would you further mess with things? Not to mention - I experimented with applying timberoil as a first coat, and what I found out was that the wood got saturated and left no room at top for an additional coat of stain. As to the Mahogany - are you putting some time lapse photography? When I applied woodtux - I sloshed on a puddle and let it sit for 15 minutes and then lambs wooled the excess off - the wood soaked in the linseed oil. I am really tired of all this stuff - it doesn't make a hill's beans worth of difference, show me a hardwood deck that looks perfect for a recoat after 3 years and then I will listen. Otherwise all these discussions are 6 or one half dozen of the other as far as I am concerned. And perhaps parafinnics are maintaining the integrity of the wood - but it's appearance that matters to homeowners. And so far parafinnics look like butt 3 months after application on my tests.

Are you saying, Beth, you can't maintain A.C. for future reapplications as well? A.C. is linseed/alkyd type of product as well.

In a 'wet on wet' coat style application how much is the linseed oil really going to set up? Not to mention the linseed oil can only migrate so far down - the mineral oil component of the A.C. stain will migrate around the linseed oils of the first application and the linseed oils of the second application will fill the remaining voids and any excess will remain on the surface.

I think 'baby' oil stains would be the perfect maintenance coat type stain after an initial curing oil type restoration.

I'm so glad I sand my decks after washing.

I dual coated some deck boards today with A.C. - I stained two areas, after the second area was done with the first coat, the first area was easily dry enough in the hot sun after 30 minutes to walk on with flip-flops. Charlie - the old adage about using oil based products is to never go 'thin' over 'thick' although this has more to do with oil based trim enamel paints - I guess you could take some parallels with deck staining. A thinner application up front has more time to exhaust the spirit fumes thus 'settling' faster - and perhaps does not penetrate as deep as a thicker first coat - allowing a semi-cured 'trap' holding up the second application and not allowing as deep a penetration - thus saving on product, yet achieving a nice even tone on the surface. Personally today - I hand brushed deck boards today {my airless is in the shop} with globs of stain on the first coat and then after the stain 'settled' for 30-40 minutes, top coated it with another coat and spread the stain out as much as it could go - the stain glided on in comparison. One thing I learned - if you inundate A.C. SemiSolid on the first pass with old pressure treated - you can achieve a Semi-transparent look. And newer pressure treated there will be excess that can be backpadded off.

I thought that statistic was unique to the painting and pressure washing trades, my bad - if you're right. I did see another statistic for painting that said in the second set of 5 years that another 90% of the remainder goes out of business, leaving just one guy in a hundred after a 10 year duration.

90% of contractors go out of business in the first 5 years. The main reason being they weren't businessmen. It's one thing to master the 'technicals' of any trade - it's quite another to start a marketing/advertizing campaign, get accountants, orchestrate Web sites and SEO managment, estimation, sales, and finally dealing with a public that constantly wants to devalue your service - and are aided and abetted by other guys starting who are charging too little.

Lyle - there is no 'body' to the A.C. stain - at least with woodtux I knew a substantial amount of linseed alkyds were drenching the wood. With A.C. it reminded me of heavily heavily thinned stains of 8-9 years ago. It would be more appropriate for much newer wood that you need that extra penetrating strength. But when you are dealing with 8-12 year old pressure treated - you need more substance that will fill all the voids. Don't get me wrong - I love the stuff. But me thinks if Russell perhaps backed off the 'trans' pigments a little bit with a couple of other modifications and then had a true Quality Assurance department to keep quality on an even keel - it would serve alot of usefulness.

I think lots of us tend to over think all this wood care stuff. I dropped the ESI offerings because of unpredictable outcomes. No matter how nice some projects come out - you see one of your decks get infected and watch the mildew grow progressively under the surface and then completely take over - that was enough for me. The A.C. product is very liquidy and requires two full drenching wet on wet coats for the horizontals - that's a drawback, it's more labor for quite an expensive product. But it looks beautiful. Sometimes I wish I never found these boards......

Sodium silicate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia New kind of Pressure Treated wood - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum Here you go Beth.

I am experimenting with brand new pressure treated - and if the results are as I suspect. I'll be selling cretowood type products for first tme applications. Its the only product that penetrates, imo. And if it seals the wood and prevents many of the problems associated with leaving ptp untreated - then it wiil allow the surface to age better for oil penetration. Has anyone ever suspected the newer pressure treatments are actually caustic? I know of one treatment, don't know if it's widespread yet - but is basically wood saturated with sodium metasilicate. These newer type treatments are basically at 'war' with any oil based coating you put on them. That's why it's best to even let newer pressure treated to release as much of this stuff as possible - despite folks not liking the idea of ptp weathering a couple of years.

How would have ReadySeal have looked after one year in comparison?

Charlie, don't you sand down your decks?

I don't know much about Cedar, Charlie, but from what I've seen - unless you sand that stuff like a mother F'er to the point where it looks like you sent the boards through a planer - you will get strange results. I've seen the 'black' as well on certain areas of the grain even with woodtux right after application. I personally don't know what other guys feel about stains - but I used A.C. Semisolid for the first time yesterday on pressure treated - and I would classify it as an extrememly thinned product - very liquidy. And perhaps cedar needs something more rambunctious like wtw? As well - the cedar colors on cedar - I don't imagine that looking good at all - I did a test spot of cedar and super cedar on mahogany - and it didn't look good on that