How to Stain Your Deck/Fence: Removing the Grey

Yesterday afternoon, I decided to work on a few paint projects around the house (since we decided not to work). Things went pretty quickly, though: I went over to my parents' house and removed the grey from their 3-year-old fence so my dad could finish staining it. Then I went home and used the chemicals on an old bench, sanded my 3 Adirondack chairs, and stripped my deck. It was a busy 5 hours, and I figured I would share some pictures of the projects.

The Fence:

First I used Benjamin Moore's Restore and Brighten along with my pressure washer to remove the grey and get the wood ready for stain.

The fence had been stained up to this point (the pale wood was never stained), which allowed the wood to weather.

Since it was never stained, water sat on the horizontal boards and dripped down creating tannin stains on the boards.

If I stained the fence without removing the tannin stains and grey, it would show up beneath the stain and look dirty.

I sprayed Restore on the whole fence, and pressure washed only the middle section first  so you could see how dramatically it works. This picture was taken before I applied the Brighten, which, as its name indicates, brightens the wood.

Restore tends to darken the aged gray wood (as it obviously did here).

After removing all the grey, I brightened it. The pressure washer removed the grey wood, then the Brighten cleaned it up.

The wood looks great and is ready to stain.

The Bench:

This old bench has been sitting under the maple tree in our back yard for a long time. I'm not sure what it is, but everything you put beneath them turns black. The toughest parts of the fence were the areas under the trees on the other side, so I expected the same result with the bench.

Doesn't it just look like a junky old bunch of wood?

Here, I had sprayed Restore on the wood and let it work for a while. Then I started pressure washing sections of the bench to show how fast it changes.

I did the middle first just to demonstrate how well it works.

After applying Brighten to the chair, it was still pretty dark, but it looked good.

Since it was still so dark, I sprayed the bench with Clorox bleach and let it work overnight. Obviously, this brought out all the black splotches.

Adirondack Chairs and Picnic Table: 

Instead of the prep products, I used our random orbit sander with 80 grit sandpaper to sand down the Adirondack chairs. I am using solid stain on them, so I only needed to remove the old wood fibers (plus, they're not dirty or covered in lichens or mildew, spo a quick sanding did the trick).

I will post some pictures of the furniture later. I stained them all solid black with Benjamin Moore's Arborcoat stain.

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