Restaining an Arborcoat deck

Hello,

I live in Indiana and we are in the process of restoring/restaining a cedar deck which was last stained by a deck professional 8 years ago using a Benjamin Moore Arborcoat semi-solid. The deck is behind two large trees so is in partial shade and can take a bit of time to dry out after a heavy rain. I read your review of Arborcoat but it actually held up pretty well given that we let it sit too long. The only issue was the deck built up some mold and mildew over time but I plan to power wash it every year from now on which will hopefully keep that in check.

We have powerwashed the deck now and replaced some boards that were too far gone. The powerwashing partially removed the stain from some of the older boards, but some of them still have almost the full color. Thus when we restain we will be staining on fresh wood, patchy older wood, and boards that pretty much have the color on from the staining that was done 8 years ago.

I know you are not a fan of Arborcoat from the review, but you also said in the review that you would not put a different stain on top of it. That suggests to me that we would either need to restain with Arborcoat semi-solid or sand everything back to bare wood in which case we could switch stains. Is that correct?

Also, given that we have 3 types of board colorations (fresh wood, patchy stained boards, and fully stained looking boards), what can we do to give them as even a look at possible without sanding?

Thanks!