plainpainter

Well - I like the feedback from making a deck look nice. You do an incredible job painting a house - and people sort of take it for granted it seems.

blah blah blah - there was only one time in my memory I was able to get spindles not to fur up. A 4-5+ year old stain - with a weak stripper. Exposed wood takes a much harsher beating. And you can't tell me when you have gotten everything removed - that there won't be a little defurring to deal with. If anything my pump took a nose dive that day and didn't impart enough pressure.

When you remove 9 years worth of UV degradation and mold, you invariably are going to get 'fuzzies' after cleaning - I don't see any way around that?

How do you do it Rick?

I'm with you - I just bought an orbital style hardwood floor sander from ebay - I've done enough 1,500+ SF of sanding floorboards on my hands and knees with a random orbital! My arms/hands for some reason are starting to give out this season. If I don't buy better sanding equipment - I am going to end up in physical therapy for the rest of the summer!

Right now I am really happy with the Melitta 100% Columbian I get at the grocery store. Second place is 8 O'clock's Columbian grind, but I have to grind it myself.

Wow - this thread really makes me feel good about using A.C. semisolid next week. If the semi-trans looks like that on a recoat - man the semisolid should really go through some abuse in the N.E!

Maybe I make it back up in the way I count railings?

Wow - you guys are ultra high in your prices! Charlie - that's just decking and nothing else - are you really at $3/SF???? That would meet my minimum price to do decks - $750 - but much cheaper if going by square feet.

I knew it was going to come to this. Any figures we would tell you would be meaningless. If you are thinking about doing this on weekends for a few bucks - you would be doing the industry a disservice, since by the time you did everything to be fully legit as to protect yourself from lawsuit - you would have to charge similar to us. If you are looking for an hourly rate - then you are going down the path of cash-under-table-handyman - so I guess what ever you are comfortable asking for. Because it's just cash. The problem is - not every deck has a nice easy strippable 4+ year old stain that will come off it just by looking at it. Not every deck is going to be adjacent to vinyl siding - not every deck is going to have vinyl balusters - not every deck is going to be located just a few feet above dirt, where it's inconsequential of whatever stain makes it past between the boards. It seems like perhaps it is easy cash now. But when you start getting 'professional' {i.e. - you have the means to accomplish any task} your price will go up and up and up. You can have your 'day' job - or you can restore decks - but it's not easy to do both. If you make anything over 60k have bene's, retirement, and have no business experience - keep the 'day' job.

hey keep posting pics as the season progresses - like 3 months, 6 months, when you recoat, before and after dawn/bleach wash, etc. I think this is an interesting thread - you got some professional results going now. And the wood has been 'seasoned' with prior coatings in the past and this restoration - so the pores have opened up. This should be a really good test for the penofin product - and what's it's capabilities are.

I'll start off and say outright that I don't like gas cookers for barbecuing - I always found myself going back to charcoal weber cookers. Years ago at the hardware store they had fire starter for barbecues and on the opposite side of the aisle they had mineral spirits/paint thinner. They looked like the same bottle and when I turned them around they had the labeling for the opposite product. That's when I knew that fire starter was just overpriced mineral spirits. But I like to keep it 'natural' and now I start my barbecues with turpentine - burns great. I don't even use grossman's charcoals - I use those real wood blackened charcoals - looks like it came right off a partially burned/blackened branch or something. It smokes like crazy when I am cooking - I love it - best steaks, hamburgers, and ribs in the world. Tonight I am grilling tuna steaks I got from the local fish distributor right on the shore.

You are getting there, Mike. But since you aren't using a pressure washer - you really have to scrub, scrub, scrub. Go through the whole cleaning process again - mix the Defy Cleaner at full strength into warm/hot water in your bucket and scrub it on - and keep scrubbing areas every 2-3 minutes for the 15-20 minute duration, and keep adding more cleaner as you continue to scrub the same areas. And then when time is up - keep the scrubber in your hand and your hose as well and scrub into the deck as you are shooting it with the rinse water at the same time. Then brighten again - this time just only need to rinse after dwell. And then repost pictures and this time it should be perfect.

Scott- maybe you should offer coffee from your warehouse - buy a 5lb of Jamaican blue along with our stain. Afterall coffee is one of the most important tools in my arsenal..

I'd go to starbucks for their espressos, I never liked their brewed coffee - there was like a million different flavors and some of them were down right bitter. I've heard good about verona - and not so good about pike's place brew.

Where is this starbucks? BTW - I do french press as well.

The line was busy - and I have never gotten Scott on the phone in the past.

I understand - the way I do it - is I will take the time to tape the side of a home and even run blue tape across the bottom edge - and then I'll just spray almost right up the side and backbrush/cut in on the spot

Are you cutting far away because you don't mask the side of the home?

Why would you bother cutting each board 3 feet out from the house and do all of them at once? I cut each board one at a time as I get near the side of a home - when I can't get any closer with my sprayer.

Wow - how do you even price that kind of work? They all look like they have been sanded along with washed - for crying out loud there was even lichen growth on it! I don't know if I would want to do it - it seems like a lot over tedious work.

I don't know all this lapping business - lapping is something painters have to be concerned with when painting clapboard siding with paint. Back in the old days - and perhaps a technique I may revisit - we would get a 9" roller with a lambs wool cover and roll one board at a time - I'd get in the habit of rolling 3 to 4 boards at a time. There are issues with getting between boards - but there was never any lapping problems.

I just thought about business today and what I have achieved and realized how much I have actually accomplished on so little to go by. In my 3rd full season as washing contractor performing low pressure house washing and deck restoration - as well as having accomplished 5 years in business as a residential painting contractor. I have yet to ever have seen another pressure washing company in action! I have never ever never ever seen another pressure washer doing work during my entire career. I have never worked with anyone to give me training from labor - have never seen how to actually restore a deck. Everything I have accomplished is from talking over the phone with several contractors and vendors such as Bob Williamson and reading posts online. I have gone and purchased my tandem axle trailer on my own - discussed with them modifications to my van to pull it. I have set up equipment on my own. I have just plumbed my bypass into my buffer tank after one full year of having my buffer. I've installed remote unloaders - gone and had special made hoses for my feed into my machines. Have made my own u-bolts to bold down my washer to my trailer. I've experimented with my chems to get homes and decks clean the way I want them - played around with tons of tips to finally find the ones I like. Heck I never ever even drove anything larger than a dodge neon before '05 - and nobody ever taught me how to back a trailer into a driveway.

Before I start posting photos - a little background first. I use my own deck as a test bed - I am of the camp that a 'curing' style deck stain is superior than a non-drying - my preference, and the only one I believe I can sell to customers. But that said I like to experiment on my own deck - I've had some real good failures with deck stain - and last year I decided to give the parafinnic style stain a try - so I decided to go with the king of stain manufacturers and go with the timberoil product - a titan of parafinnic stains right? I mean think about all the advantages - no build up of curing resins - just a simple clean and re-soak the wood - and above all parafinnic oils are not food for those little itty bitty creepy crawlers we call mildew. Well I stained my deck october of last year - with 2 good coats. And in '08 the stain was worn out - but I liked that I didn't have to 'restore' again - the deck was darkened, but nothing a little surfactant and bleach can't solve. Well - along the way - one of my 2x6 railings rotted out - we always painted our railings and stained everything else - maybe that's why? Well turns out this one piece was longer than 16 feet - and the carpenter used KD framing lumber. So 2 months ago I got a piece of 2x6 16 feet long to replace it with - I hadn't measured - just assumed it was enough, that's when I came onto this whole discovery - I was a foot short - and PT doesn't come in lenghts greater than 16 feet for 2x6. So I go to the lumber yard and ask them what I can do. We decided to buy a 2x10 that was 20 feet long and rip it down so I had a piece of 2x6 and another 2x4 each 20 feet long. I get back and cut it to length and install my new deck railing and let it sit for a couple of weeks. I then decide I am not going to continue painting the railings - the original railing will keep getting painted until they are replaced - but one by one - I will just stain the new replaced railings. Now this is important, at the time of installing this new railing - the remaining railings had been repainted with latex paint just 2 weeks prior. So I let the new railing sit for 2 weeks - and give it a traditional bleach/TSP wash with a scrub brush and a solid rinse. The bleach wasn't strong - about 1.25% and I use a 1/4 cup of TSP per gallon - but the wood was nice and clean and the surface salts all extracted. I give it a dousing of Timberoil WHG - and lo and behold - it penetrated the new piece of PT - unlike a curing stain. So I was happy with my results - now I have a solution for brand new spanking decks - that a parafinnic oil 180 degrees contrary to how I thought about stains - actually was the solution for brand new wood - and film/curing stain was not. So that was 6 weeks ago - 2 weeks ago something crepped up - and initially I thought perhaps it was som tannins from the nearby black walnut tree or something. And here are the photos that I took today....

you don't have the black spore of death that we have up here in the northeast.