plainpainter

Isn't this a type of job most guys would use percarbs for? I am a bleach/tsp kind of guy. But I have tried the percarb route as well for cedar fences - and it has worked good. Although I haven't experimented enough - is it you can't get strong enough solution to downstream? Or perhaps you have to backbrush to make it work better? I have tried bleach/tsp, stripper, and the percarb route - and they all seemed to have worked well. Some companies sell their oxalic/surfactant products as a one step solution to clean up stuff like this. So many chemicals...so little time

Lot of good advice in this forum. I would agree with you Ken, property washing has been the most lucrative for me thus far, along with roofing. Albeit much less difficult than sitting on 9/12 pitch roof and removing old shingles. Sometimes I feel abused for washing and sealing a deck for $1.50 sq. ft rate - only considering the actual deck part, not railings. But then again - it's all relative, I use to think plasterers made great money, dying art. And I trained to do that - and you have to fight tooth and nail to make $1.50/ft to hang board, tape, and veneer - materials supplied. And one day while my arm was about fall off - after the 3rd wet trowelling - enough was enough, total dog work. And I decided not to pursue it any longer. It's hard to sometimes decide to drop a service - but business is business. I refuse to work for less money than house cleaners - and I hear they are making $50 an hour sometimes.

Well this begs another question - how do you go about prequalifying? What are the techniques to distinguish cheap customers from good paying customers?

Ken on the 'off' years of 2008 and 2010 - where you clean the deck, and evaluate the integrity. I assume there is a decision to be made to do something at those points in time - and if so, how does that affect the years 2009 and 2011? Is it possible you would have to move up the 2009 coating to 2008 and likewise with the 2011 coating moved up to 2010? And this begs another question. Should we sell customers on yearly cleanings even if we have no intention of sealing their decks? I re-sealed a customers deck last May - should I be calling them up for a cleaning come this May? Is there any benefit to this, if there isn't an unsightly amount of mildew stains? I would love a little more change in my pocket - but wasn't thinking of contacting them until 2 years after I re-applied the stain. Is there a good 'sell' that I can pitch for yearly cleanings? I'd love this!

Ken - did you have to brush that house at all? And what tip do you use for rinsing? How long did that whole job take?

what is a 1/4" barb? Please mind my ignorance.

Ken - I would have to see how somebody else's guarantee is worded before I could think about offering warrantees. This one deck I did - for some reason 2 years from the day I coated it - was peeling in sections. And the customer was unhappy. My attitude - was that it had gone 2 years in a brilliantly hot area after I restored it from being neglected for 8 yrs. The way I saw it - it was time to pressure wash, sand those sections, and reapply. If I had given them a 2 yr. warrantee - could they have gotten me for a whole new deck staining by coming to me 2 weeks before 2 years had gone by? Decks that are in hot sun - all day long, with a southerly direction - with absolutely no shade - is going to take a lot of abuse. And prior to me finding wood-tux, I would think would be a candidate for yearly washings and staining.

Well you have a point - I have let customers take advantage of me in the past. I just thought people had common sense - I would love to offer a warranty - but what if like I said, they left wood ashes on the deck - and with rainwater became a big blob of potassium hydroxide - effectively would strip that area. Then later the client cleans up the evidence, and may have no clue that it was their fault - and I would be left with explaining that I don't understand why the sealant failed in one area - and they would never offer that they piled wood ashes in that spot. I have had it with warranties - either they like my reputation or they don't.

What's the deal with warrantying your job? All it takes is somebody to put a towel for hours on a railing that is filled with chlorinated pool water - or cat vomit - or a bag of wood ashes after cleaning out their wood stove, that they left on the deck and with rain water has become a big heaping mess of potassium hydroxide! I don't want calls in the middle of the night - and believe me I get calls in the wee hours from some homeowners over matters that could have easily waited for a more reasonable time of day. But back to the thread - I will throw a number at ya - $0.85/sq.ft. to clean $0.85/sq.ft to seal with products included. Ok I have run that flag up the pole - anyone care to shoot it down? And if you only count just the actual decking area not railings or steps - that figure will be the absolute lowest you can go. I do a deck that is 6 feet off the ground wraps around two sides of a house and two stairways and if you stretched it out would be 10 feet by 45 feet long. And I charged $750- only because the customer is very rich and very disrespectful of what it takes to do a deck - so I take the job because the cash comes in handy - and working my butt off with a helper - and with the aid of a 28ft long pic supported 4 off the ground along the longest side of the porch to make it easier to do the outside parts of the deck - I was able to make $40/hr. And that's because I had stained the deck 2 years prior - and the whole deck only needed 4 gallons this time.

I agree with Jarrod - I was downstreaming onto a house this deck&house cleaner from MiTim, and the residual was washing down onto this small really greyed and algaed dark deck. This is an alkaline cleaner of some sort - then I low pressure washed the wood - and it looked beautiful! The only difference with this kind of cleaner is you have to neutralize it, right? Where as I wouldn't neutralize when I use a bleach/tsp solution or a percarb.

I love my astro van

Leave it to Ken to take all the fun out of things. Drush - I made a posting of a door I refinished in this forum. And I stripped one side of one door to perfection and put two coats of spar varnish. At $40/hr - it was a $1200+ job! Your estimate for that whole decking would get both sides of that door restored. Ken mentioned about counting your chickens before they're hatched. I did an interior job where I cob-blasted 15+ doors and baseboards of their 10 coats of paint - interior mind you. Ripped down 3 ceilings and veneered plaster, stained, varnished, sandblasted radiators, Ended up being 525 hours of labor that I got paid $8200 including materials. You do the math - and 4 years later I haven't landed one job from it and I am still paying off a loan for equipment I had to buy to do that job. Equipment I haven't used since. Well at least I taught myself how to veneer plaster on that job - oh, yeah - haven't gotten any plastering jobs except for one bathroom and one kitchen and my own personal stuff. What does Kenny Rogers say...you gotta know when to fold 'em, know when to hold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run!

I wouldn't touch it for a measly $2600. You'll lose your shirt.

This is one of those decks you run away from - especially if the homeowner just wants to make it nice for selling purposes, definitely not the ideal customer that wants to spend money. I have heard $6/sq. foot for this kind of restoration isn't unreasonable, due to the intensity and cost of materials to lift that latex off the wood.

I wish everyone going into contracting was forced to take classes in estimating and the true costs to run a business. I have been running my painting company and trying to charge $40/manhour to the customer - if I give estimates it's still based on how many hours I think the job will take multiplied by that rate - and so many people think I am total a-hole and how dare I charge that much money. I guess I have to get more into pressure washing. That being said - my rate for painting is going up this year - I don't care how many brazilians are out there. You have to charge folks the money. And $40/hr before expenses ain't cutting it.

After you clean off the effloresence - you could apply a sealer to the brick. This should keep all future moisture from getting in. Silicone type sealers work great with type of masonry.

Apply muriatic acid and then rinse - pressure will reactive the mortar and cause more effloresence.

Hot water is a no-no for wood - but so is latex paint. There will have to be sanding done with this technique. Just thought it might alot quicker and cheaper than paint strippers. And most times I have seen decks where lots of paint stripper was applied - lots of sanding was still involved.

yeah - but a heatgun is localized and time consuming - and it doesn't emulsify the paint like my little experiment did. And it did this in like 30 seconds.

Here is a door I finished for my neighbor. The first photo was how the customer left it - she couldn't deal with it. So I finished it up, I soaked the door in raw linseed oil and heat gunned the remainder off - and spent hours and hours sanding, cleaning with lacuer thinner knifing out the seams - it was endless. Then I finished it off with Pratt & lambert's Vitralite exterior UVA Spar Varnish - two coats.

Thanks for all the kudos, guys.

You know what techinque I might try if someone called me for that. I would get that 12 or 16 inch flashing that comes in 50 foot rolls from the lumberyard when I do roofing. That I would unwind that and cut it into sections. And then section off an area of that porch - say 6 boards wide the whole length of the porch. Then I would get one of those infra-red heat guns, that makes the paint bubble up in seconds - get two guys in each section. then once you do a whole section - low pressure wash off the latex - the flashing situated in the cracks, serves to prevent the next section from getting wet. Then repeat. Labor intensive - but might be much quicker then tons of stripper. And the infrared heat gun will never heat the wood past a certain point - so no danger of causing burn marks, just makes that latex bubble loose.

You think that door is ugly, John? It is like an old farmers storm door - everybody in the neighborhood has fallen in love with it. Of course there is a more ornate period type victorian front door just behind it. About the sticking door - I hadn't noticed that, then it dawned on me that I gave a quick belt sanding to all 4 edges - that must have done it? About front doors being a business in itself - I redid the front door across the street from this door. the paint was bubbling badly from the last paint job. I heatgunned all 8+ layers of the old lead oil paint off. Reprimed, filled, sanded, primed again - two coats of high gloss oil.

Yeah I had it for a couple of months - at one point the black walnuts were falling down - I had it outside while heatgunning - and a walnut crashed through the glass. So that is new glass I had put in. If you value your time at anything above $40/hr - then it's at least $1,200 restoration job - one side only! I only charged my neigbor like $550 - but it looks perfect even from inches away. But the door is about a century old on a 137 yr. old New England Victorian house. The wood is southern yellow pine, yeah same stuff as pressure treated - but this is old growth, totally different animal! And the door weighs a ton to boot! Sure a new door would be cheaper - but nothing can compare to this old world craftsmanship.

You could try mixing Oxi-clean with TSP, that's what I do.