3 Easy Tips to Clean and Prepare a Wooden Fence For Staining

Prepping your wooden fence for staining is an important step in preserving its beauty and life. With the right tools, you can easily clean, repair, and prepare your fence to get the best possible results when you apply the stain. Follow these steps to ensure that your wooden fence looks great once it’s stained.

If you are the kind of homeowner that likes to do DIY to save a little money, this is a project easier done. However, making sure the wooden fence gets cleaned thoroughly is the first step in the process. It’s just like painting the interior or exterior of your home, build up from the weather, the rain and general dirt and debris floats and lands on these surfaces and build up overtime.  If it’s not cleaned properly then all the money invested in stain will be a wasted!

The stain will not adhere to the surface and if it does adhere it won’t last very long and you will be doing all over again.

The first tip to prepare a wooden fence for staining is clearing away any dirt, debris, or plant life that has accumulated on and along the fence. Using a leaf blower will help push the leaves and debris away from the fence quicker than a rack will. If there is dirt and mud on the wooden fence a garden hose can be used to remove anything stuck to your fence.

The second tip is now that the fence line has been cleared of leaves and debris, checking the fence pickets as well as the entry gates to make sure they are in good condition. Now is the time to perform any repairs that may be needed.  There may be a nail or two that will need to be either nailed back in, or replaced. Using galvanized screws will help keep the fence together in the long run. Galvanized screws don’t rust and hold up longer than nails do.

There is a saying when building or doing repairs and that is “measure twice cut once”. When making the repairs to the fence pickets and gates make sure that everything has been checked thoroughly.  By “checking twice” this will assure the homeowner that the next step in the process is ready to go.

Third tip – Although many in the fence industry believe that pressure washing and scrubbing the fence can get a deeper clean, it can actually damage the wood surface. Most DIY websites and fence companies will recommend pressure washing the fence to clean it. What they don’t tell you is when the individual uses a very high setting to “pressure wash” the fence and what will happen.

High pressure to clean wooden fences will cause splinters, the fibers in the wood become very rough and when it is time to stain, the stain will Not adhere to the wood properly. We call this scarring.

If proper pressure is used with a power washer no scarring will occur.  The best psi for cleaning a fence is 40-60psi. Fence Makeovers has over 20 years experience with cleaning wooden fences.

With the appropriate settings this will reduce any dirt, fungi, moss, and mildew from the surface of your fence. Fence Makeovers uses a bleaching solution to clean wooden fences.

After the fence has been thoroughly cleaned with bleach solution. Use a garden hose with clean water to remove any remaining solution used on the fence. This removes any dirt, mold and residue on the fence so when it’s time to stain the fence it will adhere to the wooden fence.

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