This is a deck cleaning and deck sealing job we tackled late this spring. This cedar deck had a couple of layers of old failing sealer on it that all had to come off. It was important that all the old sealer was removed to give the new deck sealer a better chance to penetrate and do it’s job.

This deck had not been refinished properly in the past by the last home owner, whether they attempted to do the deck refinishing themselves or hired an inexperienced contractor isn’t known and is irrelevant. Whomever did it didn’t remove the old sealer and applied new sealer over the top of it. I could tell this because the oil based sealer on top was flaking off. Oil based sealer never flakes unless it is applied over the top of another sealer. Most likely they hired a cheap contractor just to slap some stain on it before they put it up for sale, not caring that it would begin looking bad again in a short time.

Needless to say, due to someone not doing it correctly, this one was a severe strip job. We relied heavily on our stripping agent to do the work so we could use low pressure to clean the deck. Cedar is quite soft and can be damaged easily with a pressure washer in the hands of an inexperienced operator. This is true with all decks not just cedar. We used no more than 800psi and got about 99% of all the old sealer off.

We then returned, once the weather permitted, to seal this Goshen, IN home owners wooden deck for them to enjoy the rest of the summer. We enjoyed the experience of deck cleaning in Goshen, IN on this beautiful river front property.