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Before you revive a tired-looking deck, look it over to see that all the wood surfaces are sound. If the wood is rotten, a screwdriver will push easily into the wood and the surface fibers will pull away easily. No amount of cleaning is going to bring it back. If you have damaged wood, replace it with new.Deck cleaners are formulated to clean a deck surface whether it has a stain or sealer on it or not. However, if you have an old finish that's worn out, the cleaner will do a blotchy job. It'll clean the worn spots differently from the spots that still have finish on them. Look for signs of an old finish line. A stain finish is easy to spot because it leaves signs of wear in high-traffic areas. A sealer is harder to spot, but you can tell if it's worn out because it'll no longer bead water. Old sealers usually will come off with a deck cleaner. Look for a film in areas with lower traffic. If you detect a film, use a stripper on the railing (like we did) to get rid of it before you apply a cleaner. Examine the railing in the same manner as the deck boards.
The deck stripper (Photo 3) is designed to lift off the old finish (stain or sealer) and get the surface ready for the deck cleaner to do its work. Save time and stripper solution by first scraping away most of the old finish residue, using an ordinary paint scraper as shown in Photo 1. It may sound daunting, but keep in mind that you don't need to get down to bare wood! Just scrape the surface enough to remove loose, flaky finish. Don't spend more than two hours doing this on an average-size (10 x 16-ft.) deck.
The deck we cleaned for this article had all sound wood, but the semitransparent oil finish on the railing was starting to flake off. So we stripped the railings before applying a cleaner. The deck boards, on the other hand, were unfinished, so we used a deck cleaner only. It had been several years since this deck had received any attention, but it cleaned up beautifully.
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| Scrape the old finish residue off your deck railing and decking if you have an old semitransparent or solid color stain. The finish will flake off easily. Don't get bogged down with details; the deck stripper will get the rest. |
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| Cover your plants with plastic sheets once you've soaked them with water. Most strippers and deck cleaners won't ruin your plants but can subject them to unnecessary stress. |
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| Apply the stripper with a paint applicator or a brush. Follow the directions on the container. Keep the surface moist; don't get ahead of yourself. Work only a 6-ft. section of deck railing at a time so the finish won't evaporate before you can scrub and scrape it. |
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| Scrub loosened finish off the surface with a synthetic stiff-bristle brush. It'll take some muscle to pull the finish loose from the wood. |
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