TWP Update.

After recommendations from this site (and others) I went with TWP for my deck. I am very pleased with the results. Being a newbie stainer, I made a lot of mistakes. From underestimating my deck and fence area to sanding my deck with too fine a sandpaper, 60 grit being the recommended max, (I finished with 150 😛 ),and then not getting everything covered like they recommended and having stain go everywhere. It even bled through the tarp covering my pool and stained some of the railings.

Overall I am pretty satisfied. I did have a hard time getting stain between the slats even after spending extra effort and letting the pressure treated pine dry for almost two months. Since I over sanded it, I had to go with two coats on the floor although one coat had been recommended for a new deck.

We went with a custom color I mixed myself. The cedar was just too yellow for us and the rustic a bit too red, so I went with five parts cedar and two parts rustic to end up with the color in the pictures. In real life the color is just so rich and robust, I just love it. Now, looking at pictures of the deck before it was stained, it just looks unfinished.

I hope the pictures do it justice. Thanks for the advice. I'll try to come back and do some updates later to say how it's holding up.