A job we recently finished was to restore an ipe, pronounced (eepay), deck that the homeowners were not happy with. Ipe is a beautiful Brazilian exotic wood but unfortunately the landscape company that they had restore it previously were inexperienced and had put a solid deck sealer on the deck. The homeowners were not happy with the job but have lived with it for a couple of years. Not to mention the sealer was not holding up and was starting to peel and flake probably due to a lack of prepping the wood correctly before it was applied.

The plan was to strip all of the old solid sealer off the deck to get it back down to bare wood again. This then would be followed up with a neutralizing process to brighten the wood and to make it more acidic so the new deck stain would penetrate well.

The homeowners still wanted a red look but wanted something semi-transparent so the wood grain would  show through. We chose a sealer that is specially formulated for dense hardwoods like ipe and other exotic woods.

The trick with this ipe deck was to get all the old sealer off first so the new sealer could fully penetrate the wood. This stripping process also had to be done using fairly low pressure so the ipe would not fur up from too much water pressure. A stripping agent was applied and low pressure was used to strip/wash the ipe deck. The old product was very stubborn to come off in areas due to being over applied by the previous contractor. It was rough going and took a couple of attempts all the while we had to be careful not to harm the painted cedar screen room directly below the ipe deck.

Once the deck was stripped, it was allowed to dry out for a couple of days before we returned to apply the new deck sealer. This ipe deck was in horrible shape due to an inexperienced contractor getting in over their heads and the homeowners were only hopeful we could help. It all worked out in the end and everyone was happy.