Deck Stain Recommendations??

[esox49]

Going to have to deep clean and restain the deck next spring!! Any recommendations for a GOOD QUALITY stain? Need to hopefully get 5 years out of it. Any recommendations? Thanks

[BobT]

I too am interested in response from this. My preference would be clear stain.

[Bryce]

We have ours done professionally every 3 years. Also actively watching this to figure out how to gain 2 years by diy.

[luckydog25]

We just did our cabin and deck with Cabot. The stuff for the siding was actually latex based (it was a solid color) but went on like a dream. The deck stuff is of course oil based. A friend of mine has been a professional painter for over 25 years and said he wouldn't help unless I used cabot. It's just about $40 a gallon, but we got it with $7.50 a gallon rebate. 3 gallons for the deck (15 for the cabin), but it looks great. Darrin says I will get five years and it is facing the south. We did sand the top of the railings and deck boards. Hope this helps!

[LightningBG]

+1 for Cabot.

[nofishfisherman]

Anyone ever use a product called Restore, its supposed to be a deck and concrete resurfacer. I saw it at Home Depot the other day and thought it might be a good option for my deck.

My deck is getting old and worn and I'm tired of staining it. The deck is off the back of our house which is our main everyday entrance so it gets a lot of traffic and needs to be shoveled in the winter so the shovel adds to the wear and tear. The dog also spends a lot of time out there and his nails do a number on the stain as he runs around.

Supposedly this stuff seals small cracks and puts on a durable non slip coating that should stand up to much higher traffic than normal stain.

I'd be interested in any real world experience people have with it.

[Eric Wettschreck]

I used Cabot on the grand kids swing set last fall and I guess I'm not really impressed with it. To me it's just another stain. I can already see areas that need re-work.

My house and 2 decks are cedar and I've been staining them with Flood CWF for quite a while. No complaints. The deck stain lasts 3 years and the siding goes for 5. They would prolly last longer but I don't let them, I pressure wash and keep staining. I don't know if this is a good or bad way to go, but it looks nice and will outlast me.

[cavalierowner]

Two weeks ago I spent a couple days looking for a good deck stain. My problem was that I had to get a water-based stain that dried very quickly. I had always heard that oil-based stains were far superior because they penetrated better. I found this HSOforum http://www.deckstainhelp.com/category/deck-product-reviews/deck-stain-reviews/ that rated deck stains; they sounded impartial. I ended up ordering the Defy Extreme stain. We shall see how well it holds up.

[no bait nate]

Sikkens SDR (siding, decks, railings) is tops in my books. Great quality stain that penetrates and lasts for years. I have used it on my own deck, along with others, and picnic tables and other flower planters. I have only used it on cedar so I'm not sure how it will hold up if used on other types of wood. Good luck

[BoxMN]

I used Sikkens SDR on my cedar, and it is okay at best. I used the light natural (second to lightest tint). I know the darker the better for protection/wear, but I wanted it light, almost natural. I have a 12x24 with 12x12 under a porch/roof, and that part still looks perfect. But the part or the floor in the sun lasts about 2 years tops I have found so far. The railings do okay, and the balusters are still fine after 5 years.

I don't know, I almost think I should have just went with Thompsons sealer and just did a quick coat every year... Will try do a thorough cleaning next spring and use sikkens one more time, though the problem with stain is once you start you sort of have to keep going... which is why I kinda like the idea of just a sealer. The same aged treated that I do with thomspons (stairs to the lake) looks great still, and water beads properly, and I only hit it every other year...

[BartmanMN]

My deck faces North and I use Cabot, cedar colored stain. It only lasts about 2 years on flat surfaces like the decking and the tops of the rails. The other parts looked decent, but I am anal so when I started re-staining this year I ended up doing it all again. This year I used the Pittsburgh cleaner product and then used Cabot again and it turned out great.

[esox49]

Anyone try Sherwin Williams stain?

[JeremyCampbell]

Good luck to you all.Decking stain is garbage Now a days.The EPA made the manufacturers take the good stuff out of all coatings.I m a painter myself I was a die hard cabot$ guy and after they changed it all some yrs back I refuse deck jobs and give them away to other contractors.Reason? I can not guarantee garbage if it only lasts a couple yrs.Bad for business and bad for you.I guess If I was to recommend some liquid garbage for your deck lol, I would say Sikk%% also.Oil base is Allways better but most likely you will have to maintain it every 2-3 yrs.Who knows you may get lucky if it's not in the sun too much.

[crothmeier]

you'll get at most 2 years out of the color. (good looking anyway).

the first two years you'll stain it once per year, then after that you can usually go every other year.

Cabot is a decent stain.

Sikkens is one of the better stains.

I personally have Superdeck on my stuff and I stain every other year. I have the Canyon Brown color, which is darker.

I also sell Penofin, and that's been highly rated for us.

Remember, just because the color is faded doesn't mean the stain isn't protecting anymore.

[vister]

Sikkens. Nuff said

[leechlake]

at our cabin we have a large deck and three stoops that all have been finished with Sikkens. It's one of the best products but the deck and stoop that get's the most traffic end up needing to be redone every two year and I milk it an extra year usually. The flat grain in some of the cedar doesn't accept stain well and once you get sand and dirt and people walking on it you have issues. The two stoops that don't get much traffic look awesome.

I'd wager if you could keep sand or any other abrasive agent off of the deck you'd gain a year or so but accomplishing that with dogs and people is most likely an unwinable battle. Shovels in the Winter don't help much either incidentally.

Buy a good stain and plan on doing it every 2-3 years, especially any horizontal surface.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

I came here to post the same question and after reading the responses I'm very discouraged. Can I guy coat a deck with the plastic stuff used on some boat floors? I would think that might work on the floor portion and then stain the rails and spindles.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

What about Rhino Shield? I hear their commercials all the time, but I'm assuming you can't buy it yourself.

[Bear55]

I used Cabot on the grand kids swing set last fall and I guess I'm not really impressed with it. To me it's just another stain. I can already see areas that need re-work.

Same here, used cabot on my deck last summer and already flaking off. Did a lot of prep work too scrubbing the whole thing with deck wash and power washing so its been a disappointment for the $$$ spent.

[BoxMN]

So, I just cleaned a part of my front little cedar entry way to get ready for a touch up with Sikkens (Natural, so the 2nd to lightest tint). But I also cleaned (pressure wash) my treated 5 year old stairs to the lake (full sun most of the day) a week ago - and Saturday I treated the stairs with Thompsons sealer (I do it every other year, with just pressure wash and then spray it on with hudson sprayer). The stairs look brand new again. I am convinced that if I was going to start over again I would just use Thomsons on the cedar and just plan on spraying it every other year, or heck even every year. Easier to do, cheaper material by 3 times, and from my experience with my treated stairs it just looks great.

And my parents house deck, was built in '84 and it is still the same treated decking, they use Thompsons every year or every other year, and it is still solid, looks good (a bit darker) and honestly not old or bad at all. Wish I would gone Thompsons from the start.

Not sure I can easily change now that I started with stain, but I am thinking about it next year on the cedar. Good luck.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

If I were to start over I would have used treated NOT cedar for my deck. I think cedar is hard to maintain and over rated.

[BoxMN]

If I were to start over I would have used treated NOT cedar for my deck. I think cedar is hard to maintain and over rated.

Ditto.

[311Hemi]

So, how would treated be any different?

[leechlake]

your not asking me but I'll answer the question treated vs cedar, I'm in the lumber business to boot.

Treated costs less and probably holds up better over time vs cedar. Cedar looks way better the day after the deck is done. Over time though they would end up looking the same if you didn't stain/seal/finish with something. But you do finish them with something to repel water or make it look good, gray is ugly to most people and if you don't finish them they won't last as long.

Now you've created the monster. If you use a sold or semi-transparant stain you're stuck with that color unless you want to power wash or strip away the color and you need to redo it way more than you were hoping for. If you just seal it then you need to redo it every two years or so and have a deck color in the gray spectrum.

6 years down the road you either have a sealed gray deck whether cedar or treated or a stained deck weather cedar or treated. Why did you pay more for cedar?

For what it's worth I have my house deck in cedar, my cabin in cedar, but on my dad's place we used treated. They are all about 7 years old and have been stained with semi-transparant stains and all look the same and all are a pain in the rear and need to be maintained way more than you'd want to.

Why not save the dough and use treated? Heck if I know I didn't practice what I'm preaching. The cedar decks look awesome and smelled awesome...for about a year.

[311Hemi]

Other than initial price, maintenance sounds to be the same. Longevity...I am still curious about.

I built the deck for our travel trailer out of treated last year, and will be putting the first coat of semi-transparent stain on it in a few weeks. I am going to be building a deck on our new house sometime in the next year or two...so I will need to make a decision about which way to go. Probably do Trex for that....but time will tell.