Staining a Deck: The Hard Way

Staining a Deck: The Hard Way

We all love getting a bigger and better deck added onto the house, until the day comes that you have to stain all that extra wood. I think when it's done right, a stained deck not only last much longer, but looks great for years. I think you should use a AR Blue Clean Pressure Washer Reviews 2015.

We had our rickety side deck removed and replaced it with a much wider and heavier deck that went to the back of the house and connected to our larger deck. The back deck , also in bad shape, and wobbly from being ten foot off the ground with 4x4's supporting it that weren't cemented in or nailed down was twice as stable now too. The porch looked great, but I was eager to give it a little color once the wood seasoned the first year. I knew it was a big job, but I didn't prepare for the mistakes that I was about to make ahead.

My first mistake was choosing a cheaper, but faster way to apply the stain. After some research I figured the bean sprayer was the way for me seeing that I had two lying around. I needed to pressure wash the whole deck first and let it dry. The back deck having new rails and some boards replaced was off colored already, so the pressure washing was extra important for blending and removing the eight years of mold and aged stain. I used a smaller 1100 karcher electric pressure washer reviews which worked fine when new, but would suggest for better time, rent or borrow a larger one from a friend. After, a couple of sunny days it was time to apply some stain.

Cedar stain is always appealing to me at first glance, but from experience, I know the color doesn't hold well and appears dreadfully red when done. Now I prefer a nice oak or lighter cherry color that will fade naturally without any apparent splotches. One mistake I made as usual is underestimating the amount of stain I would need, due in part to that bean sprayer, but more on that later. Just to note, make sure you have paint thinner and different size brushes on hand for the cleaning up and the touch ups that are expected. Let's get back to that bean sprayer. The sprayer started off nicely with an even spray and making good coverage, but it was a hot day and before long I noticed the quality of my coverage was diminishing fast.

The tip was clogging up with dry stain that caused me many hours of removing the tip to soak in thinner or bang dried stain out of. I'm a relatively patient person when it comes to projects, but besides cleaning the tip of the sprayer, I spent a lot of time filling and pumping the sprayer. When the pressure would get low, the width of the spray and mist would start streaming. This caused for a lot of waste and an arm workout. The porch turned out nice as you can see in the pictures, but in addition to the other tribulations was a bigger mess, overspray. In all, I ended up with 6 five gallon cans of Thompson's wood stain from Wal-Mart, of which I have about half of one left under the house. Of those cans, one full can is now applied to my shed, mower, yard, and most of the vinyl siding around the house.

I figured on some overspray and we used cardboard wedged in around the top to protect the siding, but with the quality of the sprayer and my desire to finish, I just stopped caring at some point. It has faded on the vinyl siding some, but now I have a large cage out back made of wood, and this year is when we should stain it. This time I will shop for a quality sprayer that is designed for stain with a larger tank, and I plan to have old blankets, cardboard, plastic and tape on hand. In addition I will work one section at a time to ensure any overspray isn't staining everything I own. Leave the bean sprayer for something small.

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