Stains to be Walked On

Paint floors and decks?  Probably not with traditional enamel paint.  For most applications, there is a specially designed stain that will out perform paint. Our recent projects this spring  highlight your options as you seek to maintain and beautify all the places you walk on around your home and business.  

         
   Weathered pressure-treated decks should be coated with a semitransparent or solid    
acrylic deck stain.  These products are made to be walked on, and they will not peel
and flake like a porch&floor enamel.  This deck had a mix of  weathered planks with
some new replacement boards, so we used Behr DeckOver to fill in cracks and to cover
​up any splinters.  My personal preference is the "smooth" option, but some clients chose the  DeckOver with pebbled textures.  When boards are in good shape, semitransparent stains reveal the beauty of your wood grain best.

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   Hardwood decks made from ipee (Brazilian ironwood) need a stain that will penetrate into the dense wood.  Regular deck stains will sit on top and eventually turn cloudy.  Cabot's Australian Timber oil  makes this wood look fantastic.  Be prepared to maintain this wood each year with a quick coat- especially if the sun bakes your deck.  We prep by pressure washing, light hand sanding the previous year's Timber Oil, "flossing" out the debris between board, and blowing the deck clean.  One coat is recommended, but a second coat can make the wood look like the teak deck of your own back yard yacht.

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   City Arsenal gun range needed a hard surface that could be cleaned quickly after each day's operation.  A traditional 2 part epoxy could have worked were it not for the existing waterborne coating.  My Sherwin Williams product rep recommended HC Heavy Shield solid stain.  2 coats dried to a semigloss sheen that helps cleanup by broom or blower.  As a bonus, a coat applied at night was dry enough to allow range operation the next morning.  Safety yellow boundaries did require a paint- in this case, oil-based SW All Surface Enamel.  Unfortunately, no product will withstand an errant shot digging into the concrete down range!
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 Stains on driveways and garage floors must withstand rough weather and hot tires without lifting off the concrete.  HC's xylene-based solid stains are durable and penetrate into properly etched concrete.  Shark grip additive in the final coat will help cars get traction on this sloped driveway.  Waterborne products are available for  concrete floors that get foot traffic, but no vehicle traffic.

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