How To Clean And Stain Ipe Deck

Stripping, cleaning, bleaching and staining your deck each and every year�

One day you start to have the feeling that the extension of your home has been doubtful whether it looks good or not for over the last few years. Each and every spring you spend days to try to renovate and restore the beauty of your hardwood deck. Finally when all your efforts pay off and the hard work is finished, you are able to enjoy your hard labor. The year passes by and there is the new spring again and the your are. Stripping, cleaning, bleaching and staining your deck each and every year can become quite awkward. However, there is a solution by making your deck stain last longer using a quality stain and deck cleaner.

Just like most jobs, the eventual finish mostly depends on the preparations prior to the actual job. For example, a paint job requires to clean and sand the walls prior to the painting and only then the final result will look good, Exactly the same is true for deck renovation and finishing. The secret is prior to the job to apply the correct cleaner first. However, almost all products available contain a bleaching component. If you bleach your wood deck, then you damage the lignin resulting in the wood to degrade its age prematurely.

The best The best preparation is to clean your deck in just two steps. first is to apply a product that contains sodium percarbonate. This element is to attack the mold, dirt and dead grayed-out grains. Secondly is the application of a deck cleaner and this product is always acid and this balances the pH. Cleaning your deck in fact means opening up the pores of the wood and provide a fix from the deck sealers and deck stains to your deck for much more lastingness of your application.

Maintenance and graying of your deck

If you look for little maintenance, just have your ipe deck become grayish. It depends on the specific area and how often your deck is exposed to rain, shade or sun, it will gray only after a few months and will be really grey in a year time. In general your deck is fully gray within two years. Ipe deck however its gray has a nice silver look, it is not like the gray of for example treated Pine. It actually looks pretty good.

However, if you really do not like this graying there is the possibility to keep your deck like new. If you want to keep your deck look like new, you need to apply a UV inhibitor coating (finish) on your deck. It is possible to paint, but don't hassle on premium grades. If you are going to paint, or just buy a lower quality grade and cheaper decking. UV sun rays are the enemy of all deck wood and it is not important what wood species, they ALL gray. Please remind that this graying is just on the surface, so when you sand your deck or use a cleaner/ stripper or brightener, your grayed deck will revert into its new condition (nice wood color).

Cleaning ipe deck

Anyhow, when finishing your deck, be sure you pick a finish specialized for ipe hardwood. On the market there are several to chose from for example there is a product called Total Wood Protectant (TWP). Its price is around $30 for a gallon buying the 100 serie with several different colors to choose. We also recommend Ipe Oil (something like $55 per gallon), Ready Seal, Messmer's and Woodrich. Besides there are more, but these brands enjoy our preference.