Trying to remove solid stain from my deck

[spaceman spif 14]

Howdy! DIY'er here and I have a tricky deck that I'm trying to prep for staining. It's about 40' x 10', so it's too large to try to sand with a hand sander so I'm going with chemicals plus a pressure washer to remove old stain.

What makes it tricky is there are three "sections" to my deck. One section I had to rebuild last year, and I stained the boards before I put them down (I let the boards dry for a few months before I stained them). I used a solid stain on it, and this year I found several areas were peeling up (I later found out most deck builders and painters recommend not using solid stains on decks as they don't last very well....NOW I know!).

The second section of the deck is original wood that I haven't had to mess with, but it has an ugly grey solid stain that is peeling up. The third section has the original wood as well but I stained it last year with a solid stain, and it's peeling up as well (note to self...spend the extra money on good quality stains).

I want to remove the stain and apply a semi-transparent. So I have three fun parts to deal with...new deck with new stain...old deck with new stain...and old deck with old stain. Wheee!!

Recently I applied some stain stripper to the "new wood/new stain" section and removed it with a power washer. I got about half the stain up. The next night I went through the process again, and got about 80% of the stain up. The next night I was going to try to finish it with round three, but as I inspected what I had done I found the deck boards were so swollen that there was no gap between the boards.

Here's my problem. The stain remover is a strong base, and the manufacturer recommends I neutralize the wood with an acid as soon as possible. But I am not done removing the stain and I need to do one, maybe two more passes with the stripper and power washer. But I'm also concerned that if I wash it again I might damage the wood, considering it's already so swollen, so I don't know if I need to let the wood dry out and shrink back down before hitting it again.

Any suggestions on what to do?

Any suggestions on the other two parts of the deck I haven't worked on yet?

Thanks for reading my way-too-long post!!!

[spaceman spif 14]

And in case anyone was wondering, I used Defy stain stripper.

[seymore 90]

Howdy! DIY'er here and I have a tricky deck that I'm trying to prep for staining. It's about 40' x 10', so it's too large to try to sand with a hand sander so I'm going with chemicals plus a pressure washer to remove old stain.

Welcome to the TGS

Pics would be very helpful.....:cool:

You can wait on the neutralizing till you are finished stripping. All that stripping should make the wood pretty fuzzy.Are you planning on sanding?

I don't really see a need to let the boards shrink up that might take a while. Is the deck not draining to good? Decks that don't drain usually have stains fail quickly.

What semi trans stain you are planning to use?

[spaceman spif 14]

Welcome to the TGS

Pics would be very helpful.....:cool:

You can wait on the neutralizing till you are finished stripping. All that stripping should make the wood pretty fuzzy.Are you planning on sanding?

I don't really see a need to let the boards shrink up that might take a while. Is the deck not draining to good? Decks that don't drain usually have stains fail quickly.

What semi trans stain you are planning to use?

I'll get pics up as soon as I get a chance. And the deck is draining okay, the section that is swollen is at the end so it's been getting a good bit of rain along with the pressure washing (the rest is covered with an awning). And I'm definitely sanding when all this is done!

Not sure what semi-transparent stain I'm going to use yet. Leaning towards Sikkens, but I'll be glad to take suggestions!

Thanks for replying!