Stained Wooden Brackets

Hey guys, I want to get your opinions on how you would approach a wash on a commercial building with a lot of unsealed/stained decorative L brackets around the perimeter. Went today to test the stain and sure enough, my HW mix takes a lot of the color right out. There’s a good bit of mildew around the buildings so SH will be needed, can’t just clean with a surfactant. When I run into unsealed stained wood beams/posts/etc on residential I usually just have my helper hand clean those areas and do my best to keep my mix away. On this job though, there’s so many (not to mention that it’s 2 1/2 stories and the brackets are on 3 tiers of roofline) that it would be a major PITA to hand clean around each of these or to try to tape them off. I’ve included some photos. Some of the brackets as you can see already have color loss along the lower half due to weathering but not many. I’ve made the POC aware of the issue and they don’t want the cleaning to drastically affect the coloring.

Is there a better way to approach this that I’m not thinking of? Would you just walk away? And for future reference, how do you approach similar issues (albeit on a smaller scale) on residential?

I can’t think of anything minus taping and bagging them. Like you said, very time consuming… I’d walk away personally

Tell them that after cleaning, they will need restaining or painting/sealing.

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The stained wood was a great idea until it was time to clean the building. Time for them to make a choice.

  1. Clean and pay labor to cover them with each cleaning
  2. Clean and pay to restain them with each cleaning
  3. Clean and paint them with no worries next cleaning

I’m not a wood guy, but why not tell them to put on a coat of urethane or polyurethane?