Night staining deserves a quiet night

I don't think we've put up a post that's not about Simon since construction on the house finished and we moved in last fall.  So to break up the baby monotony (I know you're all getting tired of it) I'll write about the house project I did yesterday.

When wood on the back porch/steps was put in at the end of October, it was too cold for Larry to coat it with anything.  That was fine all winter, but now that it's been getting direct sunlight for a few months the wood has faded from dark brown to light gray and was starting to warp and crack.  So it was time to put something on there to protect the wood.

Contractor Larry recommended Penofin oil finish to seal the deck rather than staining it.  The porch is made of some type of fancy rainforest wood (I can't remember the name of it at the moment) that looks really good on its own, so regular stain would just cover a lot of that up.  Penofin wasn't widely available in our area, but we found a store up in Evanston that would special order it for us.  We ordered one with a slight chestnut tint to it to help restore the color to the wood.  It was delivered earlier this week, so I took the afternoon off from work yesterday to get this done in time for Simon's birthday weekend.

More pics and details after the jump...


I started around 2pm and figured I'd be done in a few hours (you'd think I'd have learned after all the work we've done on the house that these things ALWAYS take more time than you expect).  But the prep work took *much* longer than I had anticipated.  I first had to scrub the deck down to get rid of all dirt and mold and other junk that had been accumulating there.  I couldn't do the staining while the wood was wet, so then I had to wait for it to completely dry.  Fortunately(?) it was close to 90 yesterday so it dried out in about an hour.  But even when it was dry I couldn't start staining because you're not supposed to put the sealant on when the wood is hot to the touch (and with the sun beating down on it all afternoon it was painfully hot).  So I spent the next hour waiting for it to cool off a bit outside and assembling a toy I got Simon for his birthday.

Assembling a toy as a present to my kid felt like such a Dad thing to do :)

I was done with the car assembly around 5 or so, but still couldn't start staining yet... still lots of prep to do first.  I taped the edges all over the porch and put down newspaper to keep from getting stain on anything other than the wood, and got out all the materials (brushes, rags, etc) needed to get the job done.  By the time I was done with all of that the wood was finally cool enough to start staining.

Sad faded steps with the first bit of taping in place

Scrubbed, dried, and ready for taping

Preparations complete, time to start staining

So at about 7:30 I officially started with the actual staining.  This involved a two step process: first, brush the stain onto the wood in a thick layer.  Then after 20-30 minutes, I had to go back with a rag and wipe it down to remove any excess oil that hadn't seeped into the wood.  By 8pm I had done one edge of the stairs (not including the wiping/polishing) and by 9pm I had finished staining and wiping both ends of the stairs and porch.  Unfortunately, by then it had also gotten dark.  We have porch and yard lights that were bright enough for the areas right near them, but it was getting more and more difficult to see details. 

This side wasn't as faded as some of the other areas but the sealing oil was still making an obvious difference

After wiping and polishing it was looking really good

Done staining the other side

Starting to get dark now around 8:30 pm, but still bright enough to see the difference between the stained and unstained areas

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By 9:30 I had done about half of the top porch surface.  By 10pm I was about halfway down the steps, and around 10:45 I finished staining and wiping the entire porch.  Then there was about an hour of cleaning up the work area, removing the tape and fixing areas where the stain leaked onto areas it shouldn't be.  Finally, by 11:30 I was done. 

Here you can see the wood in all three states.  The bottom three pieces are bare and faded, the middle four have sealant on them but haven't been wiped, and the top seven have been stained and polished.

A closer look at the completed decking near the back door

Only two steps and lots of wiping left

The top surface of the decking is fully stained and wiped

Finally done with staining and cleanup.  The combination of outdoor lights (including the neighbor's motion-sensitive security light that I kept triggering) and the camera flash make it look much brighter than it really was at 11:30pm.

All in all it took close to 9 hours with no break (and no dinner) to do this project, but I think it was worth it.  The wood looks so much better, and now we don't have to worry about it deteriorating any further over the next few months of hot sunny summer days. 

So much better than it was yesterday morning

Still looking pretty good after 7 hours of drying