Had my first professional deck stripping - staining job this week. I have stained, stripped, and painted things before unprofessionally, this was just the first time getting paid for it.
The stain is just not coming off at a reasonable rate. I’ve spent at least 6 hours on this deck and it’s still got at least 50% coverage. Apparently this is some kind of ultra-durable solid color deck stain from Sherwin Williams. I applied 2 gallons of Cabot deck stripper, and it successfully took off just enough to make the job harder and more messy, or so it seems. It stripped off a lot of the stain which washed away under low pressure, but now the rest of the stain is flaking, still holding on strong enough not to come off with either pressure, a sander, or a brush. On top of that, as I sand more and more stain off I am finding that at least 1/5 of the screws holding the boards in the deck have wood rot all around them. The customer just wants to fill the holes in with filler.
I want to walk away from this job so bad. I will never, ever attempt to do deck staining again. Is there anything I should consider before telling the customer that I cannot continue working on this pile of garbage deck? They also wanted me to strip and stain some furniture, which looked fine when I was doing the estimate but upon closer inspection is half-way falling apart with terribly splintered wood filled with flaking paint that I have no desire to spend 4 hours stripping.
That’s quite fallacious reasoning. “I do great work” =/= “I am constantly working.” I’m pretty sure an experienced professional would know that pressure washing is the easy part, building business is the hard part.
That’s your comment from a few days ago. What happened to washing being the easy part?
Cabots deck stipper is not professional grade stripper, that’s not the process for Sherwin Williams product removal. Always research or ask if you don’t know what you are doing. Hack jobs make us all look bad
I’m confused as to how this applies here. Washing is the easy part. Building business is still the hard part. Stripping and staining decks is the super-s****y part that I want no part in ever again.
I think you said it best, actually. I was searching deck staining earlier and you commented on one of them to say “decks suck, roofs suck, driveways suck, windows suck…” Yeah, you were right. It’s house-washing only for me from now on.
At one point I did. I have since removed that from all of my marketing and business materials. Again, too much effort. The pay can be decent, but I can make more money in less time for less effort (and less dealing with picky OCD people, the kind that want their windows cleaned).
Now that you’ve started it I think you should suck it up and finish it. It can’t be that hard and you’ll learn something in the process, mainly how not to quit just because the going gets a little tough.
I don’t have any pictures, although I can get some.
It’s not as bad as the second picture, but there is some rot around the screws holding the boards down. Some of them have quarter-sized holes around them that go all the way through, others have no holes but the wood around them can be pushed in by hand into the hollow rotted-out areas underneath.
My main concern is that the rot is going to make the stain flake, and I’m going to get a call in 6 months complaining.
You are right not to stain over that wood in my opinion. Unfortunately this is something that a more experienced wood restoration person would have noticed beforehand. I’m not sure what the deck looks like now but if it were me I’d at least have a deck builder/expert come look at it and see what is truly needed to make it right. After that you could potentially walk away if the customer isn’t willing to spend the extra to do repairs.
the best lessons in life are often times the hardest ones, ,many of us have been there before, but what separates the boys from men is following through with your word and completing this job IMO
You guys are right. I will do all in my power to finish the job. If they don’t want to fix the rotted wood, that’s their choice, but I’ll do what I can to get it done. Thank you.
Oh, and one question. This patio furniture they want washed has deep grooves in the wood with bits of paint deep in the bottom of the cranks. What do I do about this stuff? Solid stain is going on them.
