Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am grateful to have found this product. We used this to stain a severely weather damaged deck upon which maintenance had been deferred for a large number of years by the previous owner. All while buying this home, contractors kept telling us that the deck would have to be torn down and replaced but I didn't believe them, and I didn't want to spend that kind of money when the wood seemed structurally sound but cosmetically awful. The most recent stain that appears to have been applied at least 5 years ago was a solid stain which I disliked because it hides the natural beauty of wood. It was basically paint that they slapped on to hide the problems that were beginning to appear with the wood. In order to prepare the deck to be stained, I started by power washing the deck to remove as much of the solid stain as I could. I probably wouldn't have needed to do so, but I did use a wood grain filler to fill in some of the deeper cracks and gouges in the wood because I thought it would help the wood to last longer. With that done, I used hand sanding blocks on the guard rails and a wood floor sander with 60 grit sandpaper to remove the difficult stain and take off surface defects from the wood. Next I used a wood cleaner and brightener to get rid of the many years of deeply embedded algae stains and lichen and wood tannins and uv damage to get my deck starting to look like wood again. With all of that done, I just had to wait a couple of days for it to dry out before I started staining. I applied stain to the guard rails with a lambskin painting glove and used Cabot's own stain pad to on the horizontal decking. Staining the rails was burdensome and time consuming, but fortunately this stain requires only a single coat application so I didn't have to go back over everything a second time. Staining the deck surface was amazingly quick and easy when compared to doing the guard rails. I got the entire surface stained in about 2 hours and all of the rails took probably 6 or 8 hours to finish in total. I made the mistake of staining one of the guard rails before checking the weather and about an hour after I had finished it the rain started gently so I covered it with plastic to keep the rain off until it had dried for 48 hours. The spot that got hit with the rain did develop some light water spots which I gently brushed over after everything had thoroughly dried out and after that very light second coat they mostly fade into the rest of the appearance and nobody (except me) can tell that they are there. Whenever you are getting ready to stain, I recommend that you check your weather closely and wait until you expect to have at least 24 or 48 hours to let it completely dry before rain is expected. I know that my deck is not the nicest looking deck in town, but I am very pleased with the way that it turned out and with the beautiful appearance compared to what it started looking like. I used Jarrah Brown and only ended up using 3 of the 5 gallons that I purchased, so I am going to keep the other 2 gallons around and hopefully I'll be able to use them in another year or two when it needs to be restained to be kept in good shape. I would highly recommend this product to anyone for use with an old or weathered deck, but only if you are willing to put in the time to properly prepare your deck. I found it to be pretty easy to work with; it didn't make a huge mess, and the odor wasn't nearly as strong as I was expecting it to be after reading about oil based stains. The places where I let it drip or run down the sides don't look as good as where I thoroughly wiped away excess stain which is just a lesson that I learned with this, my first experience with staining a deck. Updated after 1 year: Because it had been so long since our deck was properly maintained I applied a second coat approximately 1 year after the first application, thinking that the other may have soaked deep into the wood and figuring another coat couldn't hurt anything. It has been about 4 days since application and I added a new picture showing it's resistance to the heavy rain we had today.