DO YOU OWN A HOME WITH EXTERIOR CEDAR SIDING ?

To start off with you may wonder why the Woodpeckers keep attacking your Cedar?  Most Cedar was pre-stained at the factory with Olympics Linseed oil stain. Linseed is a vegetable and birds love to eat it. Once they work there way through, the blackbirds will nest in between your walls. Solution is use a material not Linseed based, preferably 100 % Acrylic stain.  Sherwin-Williams is the best. Frankly all top of the line Acrylics are pretty good.

Do you see black blotches all over your siding? Maybe on the trim, black spots or black clouds. Its not that your stain is bad, its mildew. Last spring you may remember we had rain and more rain. Mildew grows on your siding, its alive. The way to kill that is to have your house power washed with bleach. That's right regular household bleach. Even your deck will clean up with bleach. Thompson Products sells a watered down version for nearly five bucks a bottle, save yourself the money and water down some Clorox and add some tide and Presto! Clean wood. Just like your floors indoors ladies.

Thirdly, Does your stain have orange spots coming through your lighter colors? The Cedar comes from British Columbia. You probably have Western Red Cedar. It is full of sap if you will, called Tannins. This is what gives Cedar that smell. I love it, and color, Orange. It permeates to the top with time, and Walla.....orange spots. Again power washing helps this in extreme cases a shellac primer. If your siding is a fake cedar or laminated T-1-11 siding it could be glues and waxes, again it needs special priming to cure this problem.

Now I would like to address the people that think cedar is suppose to look extremely weathered with the woodgrain showing through. Granted their are some people that like the barn wood look, however let me caution you on letting it go that far. Once it goes that far there is no way back. Meaning if you decided to stain it someday and want it to look even and uniform, plan on putting all those coats on you skipped for sixteen years. Once your stain starts to weather off and expose the wood, the wood will start to be sand blasted by the elements. This will leave deep groves in the siding and will show up as black blotches and black lines later on. Once you see wood coming through the stain its time to restain.

Product Choice. There has been a lot of controversy on what type of product to use on Cedar. I will give you a simple but true lesson on stains. Its watered down paint, if you will. You start with paint add some thinner or water and now you have solid stain. Add some more thinner and you have transparent stain. Let me ask you a question. How much protection comes from twice thinned paint and how much do you think the manufacturer would rather you use?  You would have to stain your house allot more often if you used their thinned down versions, right? Besides that guess what else. They make big money on that thinned down stuff, it is cheaper to make, but you paid the same price. Kind of like sugar taken out of the food is more expensive.

So here are my recommendations. First of all hire a professional. I say this because I have met too many homeowners that fell off the ladder. besides, spend some time with the wife and kids this summer. This way they won't have to visit you in the hospital.

Use a power washer with an injector that chemically cleans the home. You wouldn't just spray water on your carpets when you clean them.

Caulk all the openings. you do not need to take out all the old caulk, unless its loose. If its loose remove it and re-caulk. If its cracked but still hard, and it usually is, Re-caulk using a paintable siliconized caulk. Use a clear caulk along brick areas. There are many good brands.

Next use a Solid OIL / LATEX and I mean a mix off both which is 100% ACRYLIC STAIN. I'm going to repeat it. Use a 100% ACRYLIC STAIN. I have driven by homes we have stained 7 YEARS ago and they still look great. Many of them need to be power washed, but the stain still looks great. I highly recommend NOT to use a solid oil stain, it fades in just 2 years. We do not mean to talk down to paint counter people, unfortunately they haven't used the products they sell. We have for over 20 YEARS.

 Solid 100% ACRYLIC STAIN.

 WE'LL SEE YOU IN 10 YEARS!