Charlie: Gwen is in Champions Forest. She says, “I had a deck built in December of 2017 and the contractor used pine wood and suggested to wait about nine months before staining it and it’s about that time and I want to know, should we sand the deck or clean it or something before we stain it?” How should she prep that, Tom?
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Tom: She shoulda stained it at the time months ago. I don’t know why you’d wait nine months but, this whole idea that it has to dry out. That’s what everybody always says. Half that lumber’s been in the lumber yard for like 16 years before you even get it, so it’s already dry.
Letting it sit out in the sun in Houston for about three days. I think that’s about enough and then it’s ready to go. But, as far as it goes, you don’t sand it. If you try to sand it, every time you hit one of those nailheads, it’s just gonna rip the sander apart, so don’t do that.
Can you do it a pressure wash after nine months? Absolutely. And then it’s all wet again, so you have to let it dry a couple days and then you go ahead and stain it.
Charlie: Okay, wait a couple days. I’d say probably give Clean and Green a call and get them to come in there and-
Tom: Oh, if you want to clean it up real nice, looking new. Then you know what the problem is, they’ll clean it up so nice, you won’t want to stain it. It’ll look brand new again, ’cause they do that kind of work, so which is great and it’s absolutely fantastic.
Charlie: And just … I’m gonna answer the question she didn’t ask Tom and that is in staining this, I know you always say, more pigment is more protection.
Tom: Yes. You get a clear stain. You can get one with a little pigment in there. You can get some semitransparent. As you know Charlie, we both have lived in the northern, northeast area where all the decks are painted. They paint everything up there and paint is the number one pigmented protector, so that’s why it was done for so many years up there. And they have homes that didn’t have pressure treated. It didn’t exist when they built these 100, 200 year old homes and some of the decks are still there because of the paint.