Hey there friends! Please share your experience and thoughts with how to restore this wood slab shop.
What are the black streaks? Do they come off?
Thanks!
Clean it exactly as you would a fence. Careful not to pencil it be sensible with tips, That one area looks to be like exhaust smoke.
Would I use Ox after?
Absolutely. This would be a great before and after as well. Post them up if you end up doing it.
1 Like
It should clean up and look great, stain with a good penetrating stain that will fade like whatever was on it before. It probably won’t support a transparent stain anymore, it would get very dark, almost black, so a semi-transparent would be my suggestion. If you’re doing that you probably don’t need to do an oxalic rinse but it won’t hurt anything to do it. In fact go look at my 2 yr old post Fence Job Question. You can see before cleaning, cleaned and finally stained. That was done with a semi-transparent by Wood Defender, if your friend likes that look you are on your way.
1 Like
@MDA1775 Why is no ox rinse needed?
I try to preface my comments by saying I prep based on what the desired end result is, in this case if you looked at the old fence post i suggested you would have seen the fence started out much worse that the building so you could use HW to prep and then stain with a semi-transparent like I did that fence. They turn out find without Ox, note this is for fences and other vertical surfaces, besides if your using SH ox doesn’t do much to brighten. It doesn’t change the PH the way percarb or the hydroxides do. The exception again would be if i were going back to a very light transparent stain, then I might do an ox rinse to get the final color right.
@MDA1775 Thanks! So you’re saying the fences don’t always need the ox if they’re going to get stained.
I’ve used ox on a deck and a fence in the last few weeks (different customers) after using my normal HW to clean it. Both times the ox didn’t lighten it at all. I thought maybe I went light on the ox so I mixed it hotter each time that I had to make more. No effect. 
Today I washed an eight month old deck. Looked brand new. I still decided to use the ox. And it made a difference.
Kind of a crap shoot, using ox and SH. Keep in mind decks and fences are different, different wood, vulnerability to elements etc. Even the same type of wood i.e. pt vs cedar will be different, then we get into what’s been done before. This all leads back to my number one question, where do you want to end up?
this is a fence that was an absolute need, 20 + yrs old, HOA driven color selection, nothing good going on here, or is it? A little repair and it looks good as new, BS this is lipstick on the pig. They are selling the house.
I did a live video on this fence on FB, the difference is startling.
1 Like
@MDA1775 I watched the vid! Impressive!
Makes me cry when people decide to go from bare wood to a solid stain.
1 Like
