Staining a 15 year old merbeau deck

[havenoideaatall]

I have an old merbeau deck, some 15 years old which has been uncovered save for an open pergola.

We have now covered it with bronze laserlight to stop it from getting worse.

Some of it is bad, cracked, rotten around the nails, split, the rest is brown where some sort of stain or paint has been applied in the past with grey bits where the stain is missing.

Can't afford to replace it so we will be replacing the worst in a few problem areas - cropping others - and staining the whole lot after a scrub.

Questions:

1) Is a stain a paint for decks? ie you wouldn't entertain a paint as such. I know that this needs to be done every few years but I feel the deck is too far gone for oil.

I was going to go with Feast and Watson's merbeau pigmented stain to try to achieve some sort of uniformity over the new and the old but the bloke in Bunnings suggests I clean extremely well and oil with Cabot's Merbeau oil. I think he is having a laugh and that he doesn't realise how bad it is. The wood itself is OK but its grey and brown and has obviously been painted in the past. I feel that a sanding won't work..

Ideas?

[Larry McCully]

Howdy. Seriously though , the best in your case would be to sand it. you need to remove a top layer of degenerate timber. i can promice you that if you get a floor sander in to do a sand only and you do the coating , you will get better results this way than any other.

[johnc]

Ditto,

Did much the same a few years ago, only I used a linseed, turps mix which I believe is not ideal but worked fine for us. Our reason was we removed an old deck for an extension and recycled the timber to the new one, the timber was still in good order thanks to many coats of organ oil followed by the good old treacle like linseed and turps (50/50). The commercial floor sander worked a treat and did the job in no time. Not for the faint hearted I wouldn't want to leave the thing in the one spot for two long least it went straight through the decking..

John.

[havenoideaatall]

Howdy. Seriously though , the best in your case would be to sand it. you need to remove a top layer of degenerate timber. i can promice you that if you get a floor sander in to do a sand only and you do the coating , you will get better results this way than any other.

Thanks guys for all the help. If I removed a layer, would I then have to stain or oil. Do I need to sand back the new merbau too? It's uniformity I'm after - although I know there's supposed to be a degree of different hues.

[Larry McCully]

yes it would be best to sand the new boards as well, you will get a unaform flatness, which will look better in the long run. It is possible to stain, do a test patch, its a good idea to have two extra pairs of eyes their with you to help you with a match. Do your test patch near the new deck, it is easer to get that match you want. do a wipe on wipe off method in your case.Let it dry for a day then apply two or three coats of whatever you are going to coat it with.