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My neighbor showed me why my deck stain kept peeling after only 6 months
He said I wasn't letting the wood dry long enough between pressure washing and staining, and he was right. I waited a full week after his advice and the stain actually soaked in this time, has anyone else been skipping the drying step?
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adam_hernandez5mo ago
My buddy down at the hardware store told me the same thing about waiting on pressure treated lumber for a fence... turns out most folks just rush through these projects because they want them done by the weekend. It's funny how skipping one simple step like letting wood dry can mess up months of work, same way people ignore letting paint cure between coats or not reading a recipe all the way through. I've been guilty of it myself more times than I can count, thinking I know better than the instructions. The older I get the more I realize patience is usually the cheapest tool you can have in the shed.
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charles6785mo ago
Right? I once painted a whole shed in one afternoon because the weather was perfect and I thought "how bad could it be?" Turned out the paint started peeling before I even got the second coat on. Spent the next weekend scraping it all off and starting over, which was way more work than just waiting the four hours like the can said. But nooo, I knew better than some factory label. Patience might be the cheapest tool in the shed, but apparently it's also the one I keep forgetting I own.
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hugo2383mo ago
Ain't that the truth. I've been installing floors for a long time now, and you'd think I'd learn. But nope, there's still times where I rush through the prep work because the customer wants it done by Friday. Wood needs to acclimate, subfloor needs to be perfectly level, and adhesive needs the full cure time. You skip any one of those and you're going to have problems down the road. I had a job last year where the homeowner insisted I lay the floor three days after the wood arrived. Six months later he called me back complaining about gaps between the boards. Had to rip up a whole section and redo it. That cost me way more time than just waiting the extra week would have. It's a hard lesson that keeps teaching itself over and over.
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