I have been reading all of your How-to Deck tips and have realized that I have done almost everything wrong. I have almost tripled my deck and am trying to make the old and new look the same. I have used Behr stripper (HD), and ended up gouging my deck, and I still have opaque stain on it. I used Klean Strip Premium stripper (HD) and that was a nightmare. I finally sanded part of it with a belt sander using a 50 pad. That finally worked about 80%. However, I still have about 500 sf left to strip and sand. My goal is to make the old and the new blend as much as possible. I am not sure if it is oil based or water based, I did not do it. If I strip it and sand it, does it matter? I have found your site to be the most thorough and thus, most beneficial. I have been working on this for about a month. The total deck area is 1963 sf. Whatever YOU recommend, is what I am going to do.

1. Finish stripping and sanding off all of the old stain
2. Use a wood cleaner and a wood brightener and go over the entire deck. This will open the pores of the wood evenly.
3. Apply an oil based stain semi- transparent stain. They will penetrate better then water based stains.

For your deck I would look at:
Armstrong Clark
Timber Oil
TWP Stains

Thanks

My husband and I made the horrible mistake of using an old Thompson's Natural Cedar colored stain on our brand new deck. Now our deck looks like a gigantic Cheetos colored deck...the stain actually looked like a solid color paint. How in the world do we bring back our beautiful deck?

Very unhappy with the outcome!!!!!

Thank you.

Stripping off brand new Thompson's water based stain is not an easy task but can be done with some patience. Our strongest stripper is the HD80. You most likely will need to strip a few times (or more) to get it completely off the wood.