I'm in the process of stripping Penofin from my cedar deck. Not the same thing as Penofin for hardwood but this may help. Deck in PNW. Penofin applied 5 years ago. Zero maintainance. The deck started looking pretty bad after 4 years but last summer I didn't have time to refinish it. Now in year 5, it looks real bad--dark gray and mildewed. I thought there was no finish left but it turns out the Penofin grayed and mildewed and there is quite a lot of finish left. Perhaps if it was washed once a year with a mildewicide it would be looking better. But lets be realistic, it had zero maintainance before, no reason to believe the deck fairys are going to come by and wash my deck for me. So I would say that with maitainence one could get 4 to 5 years in the PNW out of Penofin. When its time to refinish your deck, Penofin strips very easily with sodium hydroxide. On the downside is the smell. Very bad on a hot sunny day. The deck was unusable for the rest of the summer after I refinished it! I could still detect faint wiffs of the odor the next summer a year after it was applied. For this reason, I will not be using Penofin again.

TWP 100 series is a build coat finish put the second coat on right away. Built up to four coats and your good for 3-5 years. The more coats the longer it takes to set up the porduct actually burns into itself. The lighter the color the less uv protection. All clear or natural outdoor finish has no uv protection use them and the wood will go gray. I must have keyed that in a bazillion times ghesssssssssss. J.

I have an ipe deck and absolutely love it. I have had cedar decks in the past and never liked them past the first year and can`t believe they would last 30-40 years. I definitely prefer the longer boards. Less labor and waste and looks cleaner. Most ipe boards I`ve seen from good dealers are pretty darn straight and it`s easier to straighten a long board than a short one anyway (more leverage). I oil mine every year to keep the new look but letting it age naturally won`t weaken it or make it more prone to mildew. I`ll let more knowledgable people take on the restoring question.

Solid stains can peel. When it becomes time to recoat, it is messier to remove old solid stain. Solid stains are a lot like paint. I used on on my last house siding to cover over cedar plank. If the plank were relatively new, I would have preferred a semitransparent to preserve more of the look of real wood. The solid stain used basically plastic coated(acrylic) the wood. It is durable and fine for a vertical surface where it can last over 10 years before a recoating is needed. Looking at the manufacturer's labels, claimed life of a stain job(which is always longer than real world life) is quite short on a deck or porch where the stain is subject to traffic. Thus the extra work on next recoat to strip off old coat is more significant than on a vertical surface. My current house has either paint or solid stain covering over a bad condition cedar deck. This backfired on the seller of the house because the house did not sell quick enough. By the time I bought it, the coating was peeling badly revealing the mess that awaited to either replace the deck of undergo a major repair and resurface job. In summary, can be done but messier to recoat and hides real wood. If you do this, be sure to expend extra effort to prep wood since adhesion is critical to long life and labor of redoing/fixing is much higher.