paint or stain, which direction should i go?they say an eco-friendly house can't be built in 150 days for $150,000, and i say it can.i'm allen smith. join me as i push the limits with time, budget and creativity with thegarden home challenge, exclusively on ehow home. we're out here on the deck –or theback porch of the house– and i've gotta make some decisions now about how we're goingto finish this out. tony's not quite done
solid color stain for decks, with our railing, as you can see, around here.but i've gotta decide whether i'm going to apply paint or stain. we've done the house,as you know, in paint, which required two coats of primer and then the final coat ofpaint. i have to decide now whether this deck, which is gonna be exposed out here–you seeour porch only comes to this point here, you
can see. and we have 4 feet, really, of exposeddeck. so, there's a practical and an aesthetic consideration that needs to be made here.so, i always believe that it's important to kinda experiment with things in the house,before you make final decisions. and here, what i've done is just taken some of the scrappieces of lumber–this is the treated lumber that we're using for the railing around herethat will be exposed. this is paint, and one of the advantages of paint in a high humidityarea is that it actually will last longer. so, it kinda depends, whether you go withstain or paint, where you live. now, paint is going to require, well, it's gonna requiretwo coats of primer and then the final coat. it's such a beautiful white. and then, stainwill only require one coat. and one of the
advantages of it–it really sinks into thewood, and you can kinda see the grain of the wood come through. and you can just take alook at these two stirring sticks that i used here. you see, this is stain, and you cansee the wood coming through on that. whereas, the paint, just by dipping it in there, youcan see how much more opaque that's going to be. and what i think that i like, actually,is to maybe do stain out here on this deck, because i'm going to let the floor weather.so this, what looks like sort of a brownish yellow, treated wood floor, will eventuallyturn a lovely sort of dove gray color, naturally,
and will last a long time. so, the idea hereis: let's move forward with stain, with confidence and courage. and then, if that doesn't work,we can come back with paint. and tell a friend
about what we're doing here with our houseupdates. and hey, make sure you subscribe to ehow home.
