Staining a Deck in a DAY! The Idaho Painter

So, we're getting ready to do the deck here. We got some tools set up. Uh I typically on in a deck like this, this is a a restain same color. We would on a colored change or a brand new deck, we're going to be using it, we would be using an airless sprayer, spraying the gaps in between cuz it's very difficult to get down in the gaps and we use an airless sprayer with like a 210 or a 208 tip to spray in between each plank. I got an airless sprayer out here. I'm going to show you what that looks like. We're not going to do it here cuz this is the exact same color so we don't have to worry about getting down in between the planks cuz we sprayed it last time and it looks really good. But I got a bunch of other tools we're going to be staining by hand. Going to be using a stain brush extension pole. This is what we're going to be using to lay out the deck. We've got some buckets right here. Buckets and mullers cuz we've got some spindles and stuff to do. be using hand stain brushes, large and small stain brushes. I got some masking tools. All the tools and accessories we use are typically down in the video description below. So, if you want to learn a little bit more about them and even purchase them possibly, just check out the video description below at the end of this video. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, hit the subscribe button. Hit the little notification bell right next to that. Cuz if you hit the subscribe button, subscribe to us, but don't hit the notification bell. you'll never get notified every time we come out with a new video. It's free, easy to do. It's very simple. I'm going to be doing some masking. We got a hand masker. We don't want to get any overspray if we're spraying, but even if we're just hand brushing and rolling, it's easy to get splatters or get stuff on the siding of the house or even the concrete. So, we're going to be using um a hand master to keep stuff off of concrete and off the siding. Uh we already did all the sanding and prep work. So um we're going to be moving those tools off. Um the tapes we're using, got two tapes we're using. If you're going to have any type of bleeding issues, stuff getting through, you're worried about um it bleeding through, getting on the house or getting on the concrete, use frog tape. Um the blue is the production um frog tape. It's a little less expensive than green frog tape. Comes in four packs then. Or you can use frog tape production tape orange. This doesn't have the same technology, paint block technology that stops paint from bleeding through the tape, but it's great um polymer grade tape. So, we're going to be using Frog Tape blue along the house and the concrete. Um I've got a we got to blow the deck off. So, we've sanded it after um after pressure washing it. There's just a little bit of dust. We did a little bit of sanding on some corners and stuff. Got our Milwaukee blower. We're going to be um blowing up the deck, getting it all um dusted off and ready to go. So, got a I'm going to have a pan that this thing's going to be used out of to lay out the deck. This thing is a great brush. The um Goliath um brush. This is very similar to the deck boss if not exactly the same. 6-in stain brush makes it very easy for laying out your deck. Um so, I think that's about it. If there's any other thing about any of the tools and stuff along the way, we'll um discuss those along the way. But, let's get staining the deck now. Everything you [Music] So, we just got a little bit more masking to do. This is kind of like one of those processes that nobody wants to do the prep, but the prep is typically always the most important process when it comes to painting. It prevents disasters, prevents paint from spilling, getting on things you don't want it to. you were to get stain on your concrete or stain on your house, uh you're gonna have to touch that kind of stuff up and it's um makes it the job a lot more difficult. Sometimes you can't touch it up properly. So, you definitely want to do the necessary processes when it comes to prep. So, spend the time doing the prep. So, the masking, drop cloths, if you don't have that equipment, you should get that equipment so you can do that. So, now we're going to get the staining process started. I got my deck product. I am today using Olympic Elite. It's a solid color stain. Once again, it's been matched to the exact color this deck is now. So, just be restaining it. It's um they're self-priming products. You don't have to do any priming of the deck, even where you sanded it to bare wood. That's one of the great conveniences of using solid color stains. So, we're going to start from the front. We're just going to work our way out. That's one of those things you can end up um if you're working multiple t people, you can end up working um your way back into a corner where you can't get out of. And I've done that before doing epoxy garage floors where you're stuck. So, we're just going to um think this out logically. We're going to move our way out this way and then we can actually exit with all of our tools and products out the yard and out the sideyard right there. So, we're going to start from this up here. We're going to cut in up here right along the house along the um railing and then work our way out with our um Goliath brush. Um putting the stain down and laying it out. I'm going to show you the sprayer. And once again, um some of these um wide gaps right here, you would typically want to spray them. I'm going to be using a 30-in extension with a 310 tip to spray some of these gaps just to make sure that the stain gets down into them. It's good to have like a foam brush. You can use a foam brush to do your gaps, too, if you don't have a sprayer. I'll show you what that looks like. You just stuck a foam brush down in there, run it down inside, and that's another quick, easy way to do the gaps. The one of the things about making your deck look done professionally and not like a do-it-yourselfer did it is to do those gaps. If you look down on those gaps, you should see that it's coated all the way down, you know, um on the boards and some some of the gaps might be too tight that you can't get a brush down there or the sprayer won't spray down in them in there, but you typically can't see down there either. So, um going to start right here and do our cutins. Now, you see I got So, there's two of us working on the deck. And so, it's a lot easier if there's two people, you know, working on the deck at a time. One person's doing the cutins, one person's filling in the body, and I'm using this Goliath deck brush right here. And as I'm putting the product on, I'm just laying it out in the direction of the deck planks. And and I'm going to get it on there, brush it in, and then I'm just going to lay it out when I'm done. And the reason why I like this brush is I can lay it out just like this. And it's the width of an entire plank. And if you don't lay your deck stain out, you could leave brush strokes. Kind of just like laying out a wall or laying out your trim. It's the same thing. If you want your deck to look professional, you want to apply your stain and lay it out. Once again, this is a this deck color is the same color. So, I'm not don't have to worry about the gaps as much as I do um if it was a different color. I'm going to show you I got some foam brushes where the gaps get wide. I'll show you what it looks like to uh use foam brushes to do in between the deck. So, I'm just working right along here. Sometimes I like using a 4ft pole. you if you have another person or yourself, you could roll it on with a 9-in roller and then you can take and lay it out with your deck brush. But, um, if you don't want to have a roller and a brush going, you know, you could just use the deck brush. And this deck brush does pretty good because it's got really soft filaments on it. So, it does get down in the sides or in between the gaps fairly well. but not as good as uh the sprayer would or the um foam brushes will. But it just once again it a lot of it depends on the color. If I was going from a white deck to a black deck um just hypothetically that's where you would really notice a difference. So once again, one of the great advantages of this deck brush is it's wider than, you know, your deck planks. So, um, makes it really convenient. You're not getting lap marks, you know, in between planks. So, move my sprayer out here. I'll show you, you know, spraying in between some of the gaps out here, cuz out here it's a little bit more faded out here. And I'm going to be I've um got my sprayer set up right here to and started testing it right there. Um one thing I ran into is this product. This is a product from Olympic um Olympic Elite. Um doesn't like to be sprayed through um fine finish tips um normal high production tips. It worked through a um HA tip, not a 311. I had to get up to a 515, drop it down really low in pressure, so I don't have a wide fan. So, it did a little bit of took a little bit of tweaking or um a lot of tweaking with a lot of frustration, but I eventually figured it out. So, here's the foam brushes. Um these are just premier foam brushes, and I don't try to clean them out and save them, but we just throw them away at the end of the day. Just inexpensive foam brushes. And I'm going to show you that here as we work our way out here. Mondo's cruising right along. You doing all right there, Mondo? Yeah. I typically like, you know, laying out in one direction, too. So, I just lay out, pull towards me, and I'm going to work in, you know, kind of like 4ft sections and I'll go back to the other end and start again. But I you there's you know you can take and many different ways you can stain a deck and no way is necessarily the right way. But um I I rather brush it than roll it cuz I just like the finish effect of what the deck looks like after it's been brushed versus rolled. Now, once again, you could use a roller to um increase your speed if you want. Some people will argue that rolling is faster and then laying it out with a brush. And we've done it both ways um very effectively. And just today, I'm showing you how we're just doing it with a deck brush, a Goliath deck brush. But if you weren't working in teams like I'm working here with Arando where we're um two of us working on this deck at once. If you didn't have a team to do it, then I would do all my cutins first and then I would do my field and fill it in. And if I'm spraying all the gaps, I typically will spray all my gaps first. And because it's usually pretty sunny and dry here in um Idaho, our climate, uh you usually could spray your all your gaps and let it set for about 15 minutes and then come back and fill in your field. But it's kind of like um you know, if you got smooth walls, you know, you can um roll your walls, brush your walls. Um, there's a lot of different things and each one will give, you know, different effects, you know, to the wall what it's going to look like. If you roll it, it's going to stipple it. If you brush it, it's going to leave brush marks. And, um, when it comes to a deck, I really like the the brushed finish on a deck. So, it's just my, you know, once again, my personal preference. So, a lot of um painting is you got to do, you know, what works for you um what's the most efficient, you know, for you and your team, too. I like to teach people that there's not one way to, you know, paint trim, spray trim, but there's multiple different ways, and you just got to find what way works efficiently for you and your team. All we can do is give you some pointers of how we do it. And you try it. If you like it, if it works, um that's awesome. If it doesn't, just file it away in your memory for another day and maybe it will work another day. Okay, so when it comes to actually um painting and staining a deck or actually staining the deck, uh you don't have to have an airless sprayer, but I use an airless sprayer to do all my cutins and also to get in between um each individual deck plank. So there's typically a deck has um you know gaps and they range anywhere from no gap to a gap all the way up to about a/2 in on this deck. And if you just roll it or brush the tops of it and you don't get the color down in between the gaps of the planks, then um you're going to see the color difference if it it's actually a different color. If you're going from one color into the next, I don't spray a deck completely cuz a deck itself, you want to brush and roll a deck. that's um going to give you penetration and adhesion. And an airless sprayer does not do that. An airless sprayer gets down into cracks and crevices that a brush in a roller can. [Music] All right. So, we worked our way off the deck now. Come down. You can see we've got some masking. We used masking around with uh blue frog tape so we didn't get any bleeding in on our concrete. Worked our way down. And I'll just talk about we got the spindles up here. And this is a good time to explain to you kind of what I meant about not what I meant about not working yourself into a corner or something. And this is not working oursel into a corner. But we did the whole top of the deck. And now this side of the spindles right here, we would have to walk on the deck to get to this side of the spindles and handrailing. And if this deck wasn't going to be dry enough by today to get up there to do that, then we we wouldn't be able to get the deck done in a day. So, um I do have to admit, um that was my mistake. So, I forgot about that because we were just so wrapped up in doing this video, but what we should have did is just did that side of the railing first right there and then started on the deck. That way, we wouldn't have to jump on the back on the deck. But the deck is this is dry enough now where we could walk on it with our socks. So in a pickle. Um you can take your shoes off, walk on it with your socks and do that within an couple hours if it's a nice sunny warm day. So we're just hand doing our spindles over here. Just using brushes and weenie rollers. Um the sprayer I did use the sprayer quite a bit uh for doing the um in between um some of the planks and doing the steps and stuff and doing the cutins. just makes it so much faster. And some of these wide gaps in some of the the portions of the deck and stuff that's really worn out, separated, using a sprayer makes it very convenient. You don't have to have a sprayer. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, you you can stuff some foam brushes down in there, and foam brushes will work uh too, but you definitely want to get the paint down in those cracks and crevices. So, um we're continuing to uh work right along. This is one coat, so you don't need to put two coats. uh especially on this because this is a solid color stain going over the exact same color. Now, once again, if you're doing um a black on a white or white on a black, you know, you could possibly have to do two coats, but it's a water-based product, easy to clean up um continuing right along. I'll give you some more tips and tricks, you know, um as we go here. So, I just want to talk a little bit about the sprayer setup because I know some people are probably going to have some questions with that. I was using a Titan 440 impact. Um, ran into all kinds of problems in the very beginning. Um, I'll tell you this, always strain your paints. Uh, one thing I realized too, I didn't strain the paints at the beginning and then I strained it later on. There's a lot of debris in the paint. The Olympic um, Olympic Elite has been performing really well so far. I like it. It did have a lot of like sand and grit in it. So, I thought it was the sprayer problem. I switched to a Titan um 410 and um still have the same problems. It was spitting really bad. So I switched back to the impact, went up a tip size, strain the paint, went up to um a 515 and then I turned the pressure down really well, really low so it would drop the fan width really low. So I had I was running about 800 PSI low pressure. I was using a 30-in extension and the pressure is so low. That's why I didn't I didn't need to wear a respirator. Wasn't creating any overspray um or anything. But that's um the setup that I had spraying um all the in between the spindles 30-in extension. I was running an RX Pro gun with a um HA tip. So, the only tip that I could find, no production tips, no fine finish tips would work on the Titan HA tips. So, you know, in my determination, it's been very rare in my career um that I've run into products that will not spray through an airless sprayer. Um and I it's uh from my conclusion, the Olympic Elite um struggled going through small orifice sizes of um spray tips and even new tips. And so an HA tip is a different size um orifice designed for high um efficiency airless spraying and it worked with the 515 tip or I use the 515 or a 619 also worked. If I drop down to a 311 HA tip, it did not work. So that's the setup I had. I got an HA gauge that is on the pump uh right here. And so I can actually tell, you know, the pressure I was running at the pump. So, and I was running 800 at the pump. I was running just a 25 ft uh whip hose. So, this is my custom whip hose. And then I had a three-foot whip attached to the end of that right there. And that short length of whip um inside diameter makes it so you don't have to load up a whole lot of product into your sprayer. So, I don't have to have a whole half gallon to load up. Almost done here. Going to be doing some touch-ups and cleanup. And um if you have do you have any questions or comments about this video, just leave them in the questions and comments down below. We'd love to hear what you have to say and we try to answer all the questions and comments, you know, in a timely fashion. We do get thousands of questions and comments a day, so sometimes it is a little bit difficult. But um back on to the staining All right, there you have it. The deck is all complete now. Turned out great. I got some final thoughts on the Olympic Elite solid color stain that I did use. I did have some spray-in problems with it, but I'm still not convinced it's actually the problem with um the stain itself and possibly not the sprayers itself. I did make some adjustments. Uh strained it multiple times. The product uh went up in tip size and then it worked for spraying the gaps in between the deck. Um, some other things. It actually brushed, rolled very well, covered very well. Um, the dry time was excellent. We were able to get on and walk on the deck after just a couple hours. Here's something else really incredible about this product. So, um, it was completely sunny the day. We were um, staining the deck and all of a sudden some clouds came over right in the middle of staining one portion of the deck. It started sprinkling and it did milk that portion of the deck and then all of a sudden it got sunny again. I redid that portion of the deck and then it was all done. Night came, all of a sudden thunderstorms, clouds came. It was nowhere in the forecast to do because you never want to paint a deck if there's um rain or moisture forecasted for 48 hours. But it rained. It rained all night. It rained for 2 days. I thought I was going to have to redo the deck. The deck turned out. It dried, cured, didn't even milk. Absolutely incredible. So, um it with it with the moisture um even setting on the deck for multiple days. Um, incredible. Another thing is we had to go back and do some touch-ups uh that same day in the middle of the deck. Some light spots, miss spots, and we touched them up and you can't even see where you touched them up. So, it did not flash. It didn't leave brush strokes. It didn't leave haloing or anything like that. Even with a dark color like this, um, even though we were uh doing the same exact color, it did cover very well also. So, I like the product. The only thing I…