Hi All,

I had an IPE deck finised back August 2006.....turned out beautifully about a 1400 aq ft deck with all IPE skirting. Even though being advised I could let the deck go silvery gray and go the no maintaince route, I decided to treat the deck. My wife and I feel in love with the color of the IPE wood and wanted to preserve it even if regular maintaince was required.

After talking to alot of people it seems like a good penetrating oil finish was the way to go. We narrowed it down to penofins hardwood finish. Apply once, retreat every 6 months, then about once a year (or as needed after that). It turns out that Penofin isn't carried in stock in our area and the deck finisher highly recommended Cabots Austrailan Timber Oil. He said it was a penetrating oil just like Penofin, except it was readily available, so I went along.

Now time has to freshen up the deck (caps, parts of the rail, and part of deck really need it-other parts vertical skirting still look great). I called Cabot to make sure the deck guy was going to follow the correct procedure. Well Cabot tells me I can't just reapply (Unlike Penofin-which says just to give a good wash, recoat, wipe off excess in 30 minutes) the Cabots ATO. I have to either, 1) wait till it wears off of all surfaces and becomes porous 2)sand the area that haven't worn off and become porous or 3) strip the deck, neutralize and brighten before reapplication. Apparently Cabot's isn't a pure penetrating oil (much higher solid content then penofin) which makes the recoating and reapplication process much more labor intensive to reapply then the penofin. So if I plan on retreating annually then I decided I better switch over to the penofin.

We decided to strip the deck and retreat with penofin. The problem comes in when the deck was strippes with the Cabot Problem Solver Wood Stripper #8004 and Neutralized with the Cabots Problem Solver Wood Brightner #8002 at the recommendation of the Tech people at Cabot's. We got these uneven whitish spots (They almost look like water droplets) all over the deck area. The spots are much lighter (and noticable) then the surrounding stripped deck area. A spot test of the penofin over one of these areas shows that the lighter whitish spots soaks up more stain and appears darker after being finished so you get these dark spots (leopard spot effect) when stained.

I am not sure how to proceed. Should I have the deck sanded? Should I restrip it? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, George