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Since we spend most of our time in the summer at our lake house cottage, our backyard at our main home gets a bit neglected. We moved back in mid August to prepare for back to school and are finally getting around to much needed weeding, power washing, and cleaning our outdoor furniture in preparation for fall. We often love to sit back here to enjoy the fire pit or an outdoor movie. You can read about our outdoor movie set up here.
We purchased these outdoor Adirondack chairs several years ago, and they have become very weathered and stripped from paper wasps peeling pieces of the wood off to make their nests. We decided to sand them down and give them a coat of stain.
We went to our local paint store and they recommended Armstrong Clark Wood Stain we selected the color Black Walnut. They were very clear on telling us to only paint ONE coat and that we wouldn’t need to seal it after, and this could also be applied in direct sun and heat. The lid on the can also reiterated this message to not over apply – more is not better.
We placed down some plastic drop cloths and used some inexpensive brushes to apply the stain. We were very happy with how the stain went on and the color.
Rich did decide to add another coat of the stain, which was not advised as the stain can pool on top of the chair and not absorb any further into the wood. We allowed the chairs to dry for a few days, but we did find that when we rubbed a dry white cloth over the chairs, the stain did lift off. We ended up calling the manufacture of the stain and they had said the stain we used was meant to be used on decks and fences – not high touch areas like furniture or swing sets. They recommended we try using some mineral oil to wipe off the excess (which we did but it still was lifting off the color). We went back to the paint store and they advised we try this exterior sealer over it.
We applied one coat of the sealer and it worked great! We did notice after a few days you could see the groves where the wasps stripped the wood, but it didn’t look that bad and at least the chair was now protected with a thicker sealer. If you are looking for a smoother finish, we would advise sanding the chair all the way down to the finished wood, but we didn’t mind seeing the variance in color.
All in all we were very happy with how everything turned out in the end and the chairs looked practically brand new!
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