Re-staining a Deck: What Pros Wish You Knew
The work is mostly preparation. The pros spend three days getting the deck ready and one day staining. Most DIYers do the reverse, and it shows.
The day you stain is the easy day. By then, if you’ve done the work right, the deck looks like new lumber. The hard days are the ones before: stripping, sanding, cleaning, brightening, and letting everything dry to the moisture content the stain actually requires.
Strip before you sand
Old finish has to come off. A chemical stripper does this with far less effort than a belt sander, and it gets into the grain where a sander never will. Apply, let dwell, scrub with a stiff brush, rinse. Repeat on stubborn spots.
A bad deck stain is a thirty-six-month problem. A good one is a five-year problem. The difference is two extra days of preparation.
After stripping, the wood needs to be brightened — usually with an oxalic-acid wash. This restores the color and neutralizes the stripper. Then, and only then, do you sand: lightly, with the grain, to open the pores. Skipping the brightener is why so many DIY stain jobs come out looking blotchy and grey two months later.
Written By
Sam Carter
Twenty years working with wood, drywall, and the occasional weekend warrior. Lives in a 1947 Cape Cod that is a perpetual work-in-progress.