plainpainter

No pictures yet - but I stained all the railings yesterday on my latest pressure treated deck restoration with the Mountain Cedar Semisolid stain. I will say this, I will never ever use another stain again - this stuff is the real deal. And I will never recommend semi-transparent again for ptp restorations - this semisolid is where it's at! I literally had a Shane Brasseaux moment yesterday - that isn't to say I haven't been extremely proud of my work in the past - but this stain is a thing of beauty!

looks like something Bob could fabricate using larger 10" truck wash brushes

Is it just me - or does Mike look like a spitting image of Rick? Rick - I thought you didn't have any kids? Little 'indiscretion' coming back 20 years later to work for ya?

Jon - as soon as it stops raining in the northeast, I have an enormous pressure treated deck that is getting a semisolid on it from A.C. Stay tuned

I would just like to publicly thank Cabots for helping me sell a $1,700+ deck restoration today. Your garbage stripper and brightener that a homeowner tried to use on their Mahogany deck - with results mirroring a typical 1.5gpm electric machine and no chemicals is what really increased my odds tremendously. Thank you for putting $1,700 into my pocket!

kind of orangey, ain't it?

Good luck to everyone - if it weren't for this Nor'easter like winter storm hitting the northeast for the last couple of weeks, I'd be in the game too. As far as I can tell it won't be until July 8 or so before I finish this deck I am on - that means I will have been on it a full month!

John - buy F-18 - it doesn't make wood go dark. Depending on how nasty the deck is mix your F-18 from 10 ozs all the way to 24 ozs. and then downstream. If you don't want massive furries - use the weaker end of the spectrum and Brush the chemical into the surface. Or mix real strong, your choice to brush, and use a soap tip to rinse. Don't bother neutralizing - slightly basic wood that won't get stained fends off the molds and mildews better. Again F-18 doesn't darken wood worth diddly.

I apologize, Tony, on one computer those pics look totally grey - the Dell laptop. But now I am on my Imac - the wood looks fine. Goes to show the monitor makes all the difference! I have noticed over time - that guys that stain boards but don't brush out between the boards, so you get those dribbles - they're always the hardest to strip. There is a technique to washing the deck that minimizes it - but even then, if they used any stain with tung oil resins/alkyds - those 'dribbies' shall remain!

Here is my front porch - I stripped it 2 years ago and never got around to staining it - so it just 'greyed out'. I was experimenting the other day with Bob's F-18 leftover from another job brushed it on at 12 ozs/gallon - and washed it off like 20-30 seconds later. Then I tried my new floor sander I had just acquired. Haven't yet neutralized the wood - nor am I done sanding. But you get the idea of how wood is suppose to look like - you can see a few strands of silver in the middle boards - where the sander hasn't sanded down enough and the very left margin where the sander can't get close to the edge. The wood is 19 years old - btw.

you should have definitely used a stronger stripper/cleaner solution - you didn't get the wood clean! It's as grey as 2-3 yr. old exposed untreated deck!

my belt sander died ages ago, long before I got into deck restoration - I remember belt sanding painted railings down to bare wood when I worked for other painting companies. I think it would be the bomb for a quick sanding of railings - if they are in really bad shape - but I seem to remember they left messy sanding patterns?

Who knows Rick, perhaps you have better luck than me - this have given me a sour taste for parafinnics - whether or not this product is a parafinnic. But the infamous 'soft' resin would explain all the mildew growth I see on my own deck. I'm done.

That's just a wet deck, Beth. It's been wet for like 3 days straight with one day of interruption and wet for 2 days before that. But Ken is right - the real point of all this, was why was there anything on the surface to scratch off in the first place? I bought into the whole paraffin idea for my own deck - as I don't mind yearly applications. Since this deck gets loads of traffic - the thought of a stain that will blend in perfectly appealed to me. But I just hate it's appearance - never seems to look great - and there is something gooey on the surface that scratches away easily.

Has anyone ever mixed a chem where you applied it to a cedar sided home and could literally just use a hose from the ground and rinse off all the degradation? The closest I think I have come to this is using a 'roof' washing mix like Apple's recipe. But for the most part it seems you need up close and personal attention with 800-1000psi. Or I guess backbrushing a whole house with the chems would allow only using a garden hose rinse succesfully.

you're having a slow week....this is my 3rd season doing residential washing and I am still having slow weeks.

Hey Fife - just curious - why did you drag this thread onto ptstate? If you got nasty comments to make, why not make them right here? Don't you take take medication for PMS?

Rick - you return to a jobsite after you have stained it once to reapply a second coat?

I don't know about you folks - but there are always those 'throw-away' jobs. People are moving - want the deck look nice for a sale, use your leftover woodtux. Or you are painting a house, and you throw in staining the deck for free - again woodtux. Or that crabby old customer that's been with you since the beginning - but is on the 'old' payscale - when you charge a buck a foot, only counting floor area, have absolutely no idea about stripping, and all you do is clean and put another layer on, coat over coat over coat - again, perfect scenerio for woodtux.

It's the same thing every year - you're hungry for deck work - you want the $1,500 jobs, the $2,500 jobs, the $3,500 jobs. And then you actually get a big deck job - and your arms about to collapse after stripping deck boards for hours - and then you look back at the 'miles' of balusters that all need to be sanded because they've furred like mad - and to boot there is a second floor balcony over the deck that you 'threw' into the quote, which will be 'interesting' to say the least. And then I ask myself - why do I like doing this?

Scott this is an open message - I was curious if you could get me some color samples of the Semi-Solid A.C. line. I just landed by first deck of the year - and she's big - and both the customer and I decided that a semi-solid was the best compromise in longevity and repairability. Their deck gets really really beaten - they had a 3 year old Pressure treated section - that I swear to god looked 6-7 years old. Semitransparent - I don't believe is going to cut the mustard. And this pressure treated is 'thirsty' - what kind of coverage rates are we talking with the semisolid - especially if I am going to saturate the horizontals with two coats? We're talking 1300 SF.

Scott - received the samples today - thank you very much, it will be an invaluable tool for choosing color!

Heck - at this rate, why employ pressure washers at all?

Jeeez, if someone invented fuel injection first - there would be some smart Aleck who would later invent the carburetor and espouse it's simplicity over fuel injection as an advancement. Craziness. Pressure washers rule hands down to wash homes.

I don't know what your muni pressure is - but I've never seen a garden hose reach 35 foot peaks.