Fence stain is all messed up - need advice!

9 years ago

Now that the weather is warmer, I am getting my garden ready again!

I have a dilemma with my cedar fence, and I am hoping that you can help me with it. My backyard is enclosed by cedar fence, and there are flower beds all around it. The fence was stained with Benjamin Moore Arbor Coat semi-transparent stain just about 4 years ago but it did not seem to do a good job and had a lot of bleeding and developed some dark stains in the wood. Since the flower beds are still "sleeping" I thought that I should have the fence re-stained before the shrubs and perennials come out. I contacted a contractor whom I worked with before and asked him to do the staining. He came out today, and re-stained it with Olympic semi-transparent stain after wire-brushing the fence.... and the results are NOT good.

Basically, the darker stains in some panels never came out despite his wire-brushing, and now it looks like the fence has been stained OVER some dirty wood areas. I am not happy with it. I wished that he had told me about it before going ahead with the stain. He said that he did not know what the dark stains were, but they were deep and did not think that they would have come out with pressure washing. He also did not want to use chemicals as they might kill my plants.

So, he wants to apply a second coat on Friday, and he thinks that it will look better then.

What do I do now? With this first coat of semi-transparent stain, we cannot simply apply semi-solid colours on top of it.... probably a semi-solid stain would have hidden the stains better in the first place. I am not happy about it, but I don't know of any other options. I am not prepared to spend $$$ to have it all sanded down, since I have already spent $$ on this....

Your advice will be very much appreciated! Thanks.

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Comments (3)

prairie_northrose (3b north of Calgary AB, Canada)
9 years ago
That is too bad to hear ostrich! The only solution I can think of is sanding or painting over with a more solid or darker colour, however I do not really know anything about fences or stains, perhaps some others can chime in? How large are the darker areas?
ostrich thanked prairie_northrose (3b north of Calgary AB, Canada)
mattpf (zone4)
9 years ago
This is an area of expertise for me. If it's oil base you can just go over with another oil base. If it's water base you will not be able to go over with oil base. Water base will go over water base but may not last so long so I would recommend a sanding if this is the case for you

do not ever use water base stain or paint for fences or decks it's a gimmick.

Use oil base stain . If you ask the paint department in homedepot or rona they will always tell you oil base is not for exterior . Reason for this is because they have an intricate product line for water base products that do not last longer than a few years. They tell you to use a pre treatment before painting than if your removing they will try and sell you a removing agent both cost as much as the product itself.

A true stain is oil and will never peel as it soaks into the wood where water base peels as it's basically the same thing as paint. cedar naturally does not rot hence it's from rain forests so it does not require being sealed. Oil base does not seal wood and if you use on surfaces that collect water and snow the wood will eventually rot. Water base stain will actually seal the wood but it will peel and degrigate in uv .
ostrich thanked mattpf (zone4)
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ostrich
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks, prairie_northrose and mattpf!

Actually, the contractor realized that I really was not happy about it, so he came back today and power-washed most of the areas, cleaned it with an oxy-cleaner that is not harmful to plants, and now the fence is looking much better! it will obviously need to be re-stained....

mattpf, thanks for the tip. I will need to do that next time!!! I am stuck with this stain this time, but next time, I have learned my lesson and will do it properly.... sigh!

Wow, and fence-staining is so expensive! Not that I cannot do it myself, but I just do not have the time... SIGH!