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.

Would love to see the photos, but when I click on it the only thing I get is a cat food commercial. I'm fairly new to this, what am I doing wrong? We are about to embark on a deck redo also and have looked extensively at Azek. I'm going to do the floor in Acacia color and the railing in Kona (because there is no railing in Acacia). To tie it together I'm going to have the second board in from the outside be in Kona and the Kona color railing will go on the outside board which will be the Acacia.....just trying to change it up a bit. Your comments are letting us know we are on the right track....especially about the ketchup and wine as we entertain outside a lot. Thanks for the informative post.

I found the herringbone corner a lot easier to do than the mitred edges, and it was a lot more forgiving. Since I left gaps, a bit of movement or differences in board thickness don't show up the way they do on the mitred corners. It was a bit more work in blocking underneath. The decking I took out was PT and due to being close to the ground the boards were warped and sticking up all over the place. I found out after pulling off the old boards that a groundhog had dug some huge holes under the deck and piled the dirt up so that it was almost touching the bottom of the decking - in those places, the boards were going wild. I removed quite a few wheelbarrows full of dirt from beneath to try to allow some air. So far, cupping of the boards is minimal - I tried to get a few inches of clearance below each joist. And I screwed down with 2 1/4" headcotes and left generous gaps between boards (somewhere around 3/16"+ gaps).

There is a lot of information here. I hope maybe I can give a few insights into what I know about the subject of ipe and other Amazonian hardwoods. Ipe is not really that good for ground contact. It will rot with direct contact with the soil in our climate here in Amazonia. It is has not been used much as a choice for fence posts for this reason. But, if it is not in contact with the soil it will pretty much last forever. At least longer than most of us will be on the planet. The prime woods used here for fence posts are Itauba, angelim vermelho, pequia, and a few other lesser known species. Massaranduba also known as Brazilian redwood is a very good wood for outdoor non ground contact uses as well. By not being good for ground contact I mean it will not last much more than 10 years. While some of the above may be fine for 50 years. Ipe has been one of the prime flooring woods used for probably 300 years or more in Brazil. It is the equivalent to oak in flooring applications in Southern Brazil. The big advantage to ipe is the stability when air dried. There are few species that move as little as ipe. It also does not surface check very much. About 20 years ago or so they used to make prefab country homes for use in Southern Brazil out of ipe to a large degree. As the cost increased they switched to garapa and other cheaper and more abundant woods. In the area I work we have a lot of Massaranduba and Europe is the major consumer. The Europeans use the antislip profile on boards which hides defects somewhat. And, they do not use wood finishes much from what I understand. In addition the climate in Northern Europe is more humid and stable than most of the USA which is better for Massaranduba. If Massaranduba is properly dried it is fine in any climate. Ipe has gotten very expensive in Brazil and I think it is time for the USA market to look seriously at other wood species for decking. Which has been happening. This is also better for sustainable forest management as it uses the resource better and helps preserve the standing forest. Here are a few pictures of Massaranduba being sawn into deck blanks which were shipped to Holland to be milled into decking there. Hopefully some will find it interesting to see where the material comes from. Massaranduba logs on the sawmill line. Massaranduba being sawn. A massaranduba log. You can see the red color. The tree has a high latex content and is mixed into natural rubber in some places to enhance quality of the mixture. The white streaks is the latex from the bark of the tree. The boards which are 32 MM X 155 MM are cut to length. For Europe that is every foot from 7 feet up to 20 feet. Being packed for shipment. Here is an order of rough sawn ipe going to the USA.