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plainpainter

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Posts posted by plainpainter

  2. Posted · Edited by plainpainter · Report reply

    Jim - you will laugh when I tell you how I stripped this deck. I had HD-80 mixed full strenght in a pump-up. But I had my winterized trailer with 15 gallons of anti-freeze sitting in the float tank - I took it out of winterization by emptying it on this deck, then following with HD-80, and then emptied the remainder on top of that!!!! LOL - and it still didn't get everything off! The first coat was some Cabot's clear - it was hard as glass, those photos of the stripped deck are to follow.

    Oh yeah - when I was stripping off this so-called 'stain' it had built up so much, I had to get a landscaping broom to push off the accumulated pile of this stain off the deck! Seems to be more and more of this kind of non-sense as time goes on.

  6. Posted · Report reply

    Charlie, you've been lucky then. Because I know I can strip A.C. with my house wash. Maybe your guys didn't spend anytime rinsing off the deck, in which case perhaps all the loose pigment stayed in place - which is lucky. Or the homeowners just haven't been very discerning. But it would definitely be prudent of you to do some testing and make sure everything stays in place to your satisfaction. I routinely wash houses with adjacent decking, where I can literally scrub F-10 into the surface with dwell into a 2 yr. old finish - and nothing happens to the finish.

  7. Posted · Report reply

    You won't have to strip Armstrong Clark to reapply maintenance coats. Of the few we did, the ready seal decks I got again I switched to AC last time around

    That's because anything north of half strength house wash, and your A.C. deck will be stripped. God forbid I ever come across a house wash with an adjacent A.C. deck that I unsuspectingly wash.

    Now that would ruin my day!

  8. Posted · Report reply

    This is a deck I am attempting to restore, it is straight grained fir that was installed just two years ago and immediately finished off with Sikkens SRD. Now my initial reaction was that Sikkens is now junk - but I have been compiling a bunch of memories of my work in the past with several fir decks dating back to '06 all the way to a restoration I just completed and my opinion now is that Fir is just junk wood - at least for staining purposes in an outdoor environment. It was the only wood folks use to use for their covered front porches - before pressure treated existed, but was only ever painted typically with some form of oil floor paint.

    I will be abandoning oil entirely for this last Fir project and I am going with DEFY Extreme epoxy/nano-particles based stain. Will follow up with pictures as I continue this project.

    post-1720-137772385511_thumb.jpg

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  9. Posted · Report reply

    Man - I was $hitting bricks that those tornados would make it to eastern Mass - I feel so badly for you guys. They're saying that the springfield tornado was an EF3 - I don't believe it, only EF-4 and above obliterates houses - and that was total carnage I saw on the news.

  12. Posted · Report reply

    I was just asked to look at a deck for a previous customer - previously the deck was coated with latex solid stain on fir - two years ago, they had it re-skinned with Fir and then coated with Sikkens, SRD I assume.

    Now the thing looks like the biggest piece of garbage I have ever seen. The problem is that it mirrors exactly my experience with my own Fir projects in the past.

    Is sikkens just total crap - or is there something kind of F'd up with Fir? I've never seen a Fir deck look good - except one that had a roof and was painted with high gloss oil porch and floor paint.

    Is DEFY epoxy style stain a good candidate with Fir wood? I am nervous about using A/C as I am having mildew problems with pressure treated.

    Just wondering if anyone else has had any experience with Fir decking and noticed similar things. I have a friend with an old picnic table with the table top made from fir, semi-solid stain, probably has sat outdoors for the past 14+ years and still looks good. This is the only time I have ever seen outdoor stained fir look decent.

  14. Posted · Report reply

    If I had a nickel for all the bull$hit products that have come and gone over the years while a member of these boards - I'd be rich! Kevin, dont' take this personally, I speak for many when I say we've been swindled many times over by many manufacturers over the years. At this point, I'd wait 10 years vetting a new product before I changed. Heck, I am not even sold on some oil based products touted on these boards - I am having incredible mildew problems. Just wait until you have to strip a double application of SPF - then tell me how sold you are on acrylate/acrylic products. Not to mention if you have a product last 7 years, then you have effectively killed off your maintenance business. That's why I got out of house painting, customers go 7+ years without needing your business and your cash flow just sucks. Products also have to be friendly to our bottom line as well, or we go out of business. You can never go wrong putting oils into wood.

  15. Posted · Report reply

    From my experience after doing several oxidation removal projects - I think once you perform a restoration, the surface is much much smoother and that smoothness actually deters regrowth for mildew. This is based upon several homes I did, one being huge oak trees completely covering the north side of a home. Usually there would be strong mildew and algae growth within a year's time - as the 'north' side doesn't need any close proximity of trees to have violent regrowth. But add in a grove of trees completely surrounding the home on the North side with braches resting/covering the roof as well - and you have a disaster of mildew regrowth.

    This one home I observed had very negligible regrowth even after 4 years time. So I suspect the relatively slippery surface of vinyl after all oxidation has removed deters atmospheric pollutants from sticking to it which is first step of mildew regrowth. I washed a friends truck completely that had mildew growth on 3 months later - it had a very porous oxidized paint surface.

    And lastly how many times have you heard homeowners say for the first 12 or so years the home never had mildew growth? I suspect the mildew starts to appear after appreciable oxidation buildup, which is probably the amount of time customers say before they started seeing the stuff.

    So let me ask you this, if oxidation 'grabs' onto atmospheric pollutants faster which promotes mildew growth - why would you promote a service that will inevitably greatly reduce repeat work? At the very least - if a house will go 4X longer before noticeable regrowth, you should charge 4X as much.

  16. Posted · Report reply

    As well - I am starting to think that A.C. is perhaps a perfect stain for a more arid/dry climate. I've noticed that on this latest recoat, 10 months after the initial staining - that even though the pigment was wiped off the surface, it still had oils in the wood. This sounds like a good thing, but what I noticed that even just one application of this maintenance coat just didn't cure like the original. It still had oily plumes in the standing rain water one month after application. And since this has been the driest summer on the books with burnt out lawns everywhere - it ain't a due to a lack of dry hot summer heat.

    And I think this sort of lack of curing may be an attractant for spores to stick to more easily.

  17. Posted · Report reply

    The finish may not be need to be stripped, but any effort to clean the stuff off strips off the finish. This 'mildew' was only on for like 2-3 days when the rains started.

    Last time I let it sit for a month before attempting to take it off - and it didn't come off like normal mildew does. I had to use my typical house wash solution before it gets siphoned directly from the 5'er and brush it on. That wiped off the finish completely. And the 'mildew' is not to be seen on any adjacent latex painted surface.

    Whatever this stuff is - it ain't normal mildew. I have always been able to take off most mildew from a stained deck with as little as two cups of household bleach per gallon with a few squirts of 'soap'. This stuff needs a full blown exorcism with 2-stepping which winds up removing the entire finish. I was lucky to catch it early this time around - but I can see the finish has been dulled from even the weak bleach solution I used yesterday.

  18. Posted · Report reply

    This stuff is really pissing me off!!!!! This is the stuff that caused me to strip this front deck a month ago. I couldn't get it off once it set in last time - it grew right into the finish. As you can see, I can wipe it off with my fingertips at this point - I've never heard of being able to do that with mildew?

    YouTube - 013.mp4

    And it appears now the deck is drying off that once again some of the finish got wacked right off again. I could see plumes of oil as I was brushing it.

  22. Posted · Report reply

    Does anyone know what are those black stains that leaves {tree leaf} leave behind when left on a deck for a few days to a couple of weeks? I thought they were tannins, and now I think it some sort of mildew - but not the kind of mildew that's dies easily with mild bleach solutions. Anyone have a clue? The procedure to remove them seems to mirror some of those really hard composite decks sometimes. I just killed a 9 month old finish removing these stains.

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