Note: These Steps will work on Failed Brick Paver, Stamped Concrete, and Decorative Concrete Sealers.

Brick Paver Sealers are different then regular concrete sealers in that they:

• Darken the appearance by giving a "wet" look.
• Can give a gloss appearance that ranges between satin to high gloss.
• Helps solidify joint sand.
• Film on the surface somewhat instead of penetrating completely into the concrete.

Unfortunately Brick Paver and Decorative Concrete Sealers sometimes fail by discoloring and turning milky white or yellow in color. Typically this happens for one of these reasons:

These tips will help you stain an average wood deck in 2 hours!

The suggestions below will help you speed up the process of applying a wood stain to a deck. It is best to apply a semi-transparent wood or deck sealer with a pad applicator or by low pressure spraying followed by a pad to ensure an even application.

Must Read!

Top 10 Myths for Exterior Wood and Deck Restoration

1. New wood does not need to be cleaned. This is not true. New wood needs to be prepped with a wood cleaner and a wood brightener. This will remove dirt, grime, and mill glaze. These two steps will "open" the wood pores allowing the stain to penetrate better. The better the wood stain absorbs, the better it will work.

There are many different colors and opacities when dealing with decking stain. Before searching for a deck stain, you should determine the look you want. Some stains (solid colors) will completely hide the wood grain while others (transparent and semi-transparent) while allow the grain to show through, this is referred to as opacity. The higher the opacity the more pigmentation resulting in less wood grain showing.

Color is the tint or hue a deck stain has. Many different colors and tints can be added to stain. The most common are natural wood colors, redwoods, and darker browns. Color is directly related to opacity. Lower opacity of a stain allows the wood's natural color to show through more while a higher opacity will hide more of the wood's color resulting in more of the stain's color or pigment to show. While all deck stains provide water protection, the more pigment a stain has the more UV protection it provides. A clear stain would provide almost zero UV protection while a solid stain would provide the most protection from the sun.

New or Gray looking Decks/Wood

When cleaning Wood or Decks, use a cleaning product similar to Restore-A-Deck or the Defy Wood Deck Cleaner. This will open the pores and remove any graying and or dirt. This is important even for new wood. New wood has a mill glaze that should be removed prior to any stain application. For removal of old coatings see Wood and Deck Stripping.

The reason the majority of products fail are:

• A product is applied too thick, over a previous coating, or a solid color stain/paint was used resulting in a film forming coating. A film forming coating is a product that does not penetrate into the wood completely. A product that does not penetrate can result in premature peeling and or flaking. All of our stains penetrate into the wood.
• The deck/wood is not properly prepped for application of coating resulting in the stains not penetrating into the wood.
• New wood is not dry and/or prepped for application of stain. You cannot stain a brand new deck/wood without applying cleaners to open the pores.
• Unless absolutely necessary (removal of solid stain and/or paint), never power sand a deck. This will close the pores of the wood and your new stain may not penetrate properly. If you must, try not to use a grit finer than 60 grit. You can lightly sand by hand or with de-felting pads on low speed orbital sanders to remove splinters and/or raised grain of wood.

When removing a failed transparent wood or deck coating it is needed to use a Deck Stripper similar to HD80 or the Defy Wood Deck Stripper. This will soften the old coating allowing easier removal.

*This process will work on the majority of transparent and semi-transparent stains. It will not be as effective on solid or opaque stains.

When brightening Wood or Decks, use a brightening product similar to Restore-A-Deck or the Defy Deck Brightener. This is extremely important after cleaning or stripping the wood. Not only will this "brighten" the wood, it will also neutralize the cleaner or stripper, ensuring that your deck stain will perform properly.