Any painters here? Need advice.

[SXIPro]

I have a covered porch and an exterior set of stairs that I have yet to find a paint/stain for the flooring or the stair risers that stays adhered worth a damn. It's pressure treated wood and now is about 20 yrs old, so it is not still wet from the mill. Suggestions on a product? Should I skip any water based stuff and go oil based?

Thanks

 

[Goldfishnado]

Since it's 20 years old, you're looking at more of a restoration approach opposed to staining a brand new deck 3-6 months after it's dry. I'm not an expert but I had a similar project like this years ago at my last place and ended up cleaning it with Oxy-Clean which not only cleans the mildew and dirt, but also weathered wood. If you want to go hardcore, look for Sodium Percarbonate, when you mix it with water it essentially creates hydrogen peroxide and sodium carbonate in one solution. Let that dry then hit it with the thickest most solid stain you can to hide the age. I've had good results with Cabot brand but I'm not a professional by any means.

 

[joelake]

I have used oil based stain/varnish on older outdoor timber with a product called penatroil mixed in. Dunno if you guys have it in the US but it does do it's job, makes poop stick!

 

[mxmark4]

What about one of those deck rrstoration products like rustoleum deck over? It looks pretty heavy duty, I am in the process of building a deck onto my existing covered porch and was not impressed with how poorly the expensive sherwin williams stain I used only made it one year on the stairs.

 

[Goldfishnado]

What about one of those deck rrstoration products like rustoleum deck over? It looks pretty heavy duty, I am in the process of building a deck onto my existing covered porch and was not impressed with how poorly the expensive sherwin williams stain I used only made it one year on the stairs.

Solid stain aka deck over is great stuff. The Valspar version from Lowe's can be tinted so the wife can pick any color she wants. Some brands only come in limited colors, not sure about Rustoleum. They last about 10 years or so but what I like about them is if you need to replace a board, you can give it a fresh coat and it will blend right in with the rest of the deck. I did that last year with a few boards and you can't tell the difference between the 6 year old coat and the 6 day old coat once everything was washed.