Staining Pressure Treated Wood

If you’ve been hanging out with me, you know I’m working on a screen porch makeover-I think as of today I’m done with the not-so-fun stuff! The floors were a big concern and using Behr Semi Transparent Stain in Pinto White I gave them a whitewashed/distressed look-read about it HERE!

I used the same stain on the inside railings and I love the results!

I didn’t want to paint the wood,  I just wanted it to look lighter and to lose the yellowish color of pressure treated lumber…here’s the way the wood looked before…

The semi transparent stain lightened up the space and really made the porch feel finished…

Getting the wood ready to stain was easy. First,  I cleaned the railings by wiping them down with wet rags. The porch is only a year old and the railings weren’t extremely dirty but with older wood I think you’d need to use a brush on some places.

After letting the rails dry overnight, you can start staining!  I used a small roller especially made for rough surfaces and in the tight places I used foam paint brushes.

In some areas, the wood soaked up the stain more than others and I had to do a couple of coats. In some places the stain didn’t go on smoothly and I gently wiped over the wood and reapplied the stain until I liked the way it looked!  When painting wood, the objective is to COVER the wood, but with the semi-transparent stain my objective was simply to like the way it looked. This takes a little time because with every small section, I stopped and looked at it. If I didn’t like it, I gently wiped over the wood- looked at it again and sometimes added more stain.

While this part of the project was necessary and turned out great, I’m going to be honest…it was tedious and nearly killed my arms, shoulders and neck!

Oh, and Bindi said to tell you, the hard work wore her out too!

Bottom line…if you have a porch with the pressure treated wood that is in need of stain, I think it’s worth doing! Give yourself a few days and jump in, you’ll be glad you did!

Sending you love my sweet friends…

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