Professional Help Needed

17 years ago

We recently bought a beautiful Victorian home with an outside wood floor porch.

The porch is chipping and has at least 4-5 coats of paint on it. We want it sanded down and a stain applied.

We don't have any idea on how this is done. We have 2 estimates and 2 different ways of doing this job. Our porch is roughly 20 x 10.

1st contractor - sand to raw wood. Hand rub Cabot wood stain. Than brush another coat of Cabot wood stain $450

2nd contractor - sand to raw wood. Apply wood stain (minwax) with lambswool. Apply coat of polyurethane, when dry apply a 2nd coat of polyurethane $1500

We are so confused. What is the correct way to strip and stain our porch. There must be a certain way to do this since it is outside.

Thanks for the advise. It is always good to know what we are talking.

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Comments (11)

glennsfc
17 years ago
You want to avoid applying a film-forming finish, such as polyurethane, to an outside porch floor.

I did that for a customer as a realtime experiment. I used Traffic over Bona DriFast stain. Held up well, but was slippery when wet, especially in winter.
floorguy
17 years ago
I agree, interior poly is a no-no outside.

I use Thompson deck seal.
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cactuscatie
17 years ago
Thanks, we were afraid of the porch being slippery. Guess the $1500 guy doesn't know what he's doing.

It's so hard to find someone, especially in our area.
bill_vincent
17 years ago
Here's where I stop being the tile guy and turn into the happy DIYer. :-)

What about painting the deck boards? Reason I ask is that I've got the same problem. In fact, there are two places on my front porch where someone obviously went THROUGH the floor, so all the boards have to be replaced, but I'd like to keep it as original as possible, and the deck WAS painted gray before. bad idea?
floorguy
17 years ago
You just buy that money pit, Bill?
homebound
17 years ago
You may want to inquire in the Porch & Deck forum. Some of those guys seem to do a lot of outdoor wood restoration.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/porch/?30682
glennsfc
17 years ago
Deck Paint is also a film-forming finish and is slippery when wet, unless a fine, sandy aggregate is added to the product to make it slip resistant.

Nice house Bill...I remember you posted it before awhile back (or am I dreamin' again!).
bill_vincent
17 years ago
No, it's the same house. We actually closed on it in October. Looks a little different now, but not by much. Been too busy this summer. All the lattice is gone from the front porch, the porches have been leveled, and a bunch of paint's been scraped, although we're far from finished! All the windows have been changed over to energy efficient windows, too. Also, right along the side of the house facing the camera from the front porch back, my wife's got a beautiful flower garden going. :-) Now if I could just make the porches safe to walk on!

Deck Paint is also a film-forming finish and is slippery when wet, unless a fine, sandy aggregate is added to the product to make it slip resistant.

I can do that. I've got a couple of bags of silica sand in the shed that I can mix in and more or less turn it into "non-skid".
glennsfc
17 years ago
I especially like the box bay window.

The sands gotta be really fine; I don't think that play sand would even qualify.

Like we tell our customers..."do a test"...
bill_vincent
17 years ago
Thanks. That box bay is actually "walk-through". IOW, there's no shelf there. But there will be by the time I'm done with it. Back a few years ago, I designed a 4 color travertine starburst for someone for THEIR bay window. I've still got the template for it, and I think I'm going to do it again, but this time with different colors of granite, blue pearl being the field. This was the starburst:

As for the sand, it's pretty fine, but I WILL do a test piece, just to be sure. Thanks for the help!
floorguy
17 years ago
Ya, coarse sand will wear off fast.

Like a hang nail that finally comes off

The deal with sand in the paint, it give it a texture, that can be a dirt grabber.

When I framed homes, the outside porches like that were never framed level. Always a slight pitch like a shower floor, for rain run off and not pooling on the tight wood deck.