Victorian Porch Renovation / Bad experience with Cabot Australian

11 years ago

We've been renovating our 1890 Victorian, room by room. This summer we finally got to the wrap-around front porch. (Pictures here.)

We had ordered Cabot's Australian Timber Oil, in sample cans in almost every shade. After much deliberation, we chose a stain color for the deck. We had to special order the shade, since no store near us carried what we needed for the ipe/ brazillian hardwood flooring.

The day the guys came out and sanded the floor, we opened the cans, ready to stain... and found IT WAS A DIFFERENT SHADE than we'd ordered. The name was the same, but the color was not. Obviously, shame on us for not thinking to open the full-size cans, but it never crossed our minds that we wouldn't have gotten what we ordered. (Pictures here)

Much stress and running around ensued. Our Home Depot carries nothing for IPE/Brazilian hardwood or whatever category that is... Trying to find a store on a Saturday afternoon that was open and carried what we needed was a nightmare.

We ended up finding a mom-and-pop paint store that carried Sikkens. We told them about our Cabot experience, and they told us that Cabot has been purchased by Valspar and their store stopped carrying it because the product was unreliable.

It was a miserable day. And it was essentially impossible to test the Sikkens shades on the newly sanded deck. It was so frustrating to have theoretically done the process right, only to not have it matter.

So: open cans. Check colors. PRIOR to having the floor sanded!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sanding and Staining our front porch.

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Comments (9)

Jumpilotmdm
11 years ago
Having the product in the can be different than the label is a HIGHLY UNUSUAL situation and probably has nothing to do with Valspar's acquisition of Cabot a few years ago.
Prior to having the floor sanded? Why? Unless I'm missing something, you can sand today and oil tomorrow with no negative results that I know of.
VictoriaElizabeth
Original Author
11 years ago
After my conversation with the local paint store, and then later with Cabot... it seems likely that the sample cans were old stock... According to the paint-guys, Cabot has changed names of shades and added new options. Plus, we ordered the samples directly from Cabot, but the full-size product we ordered from our local paint store.

I don't know if we could have waited to stain... my husband's concern was that given a few days, our friendly neighborhood cats/raccoons/squirrels would track dirt over the porch and leave a less pristine surface to finish.

Besides, if it was just going to be a day, maybe we could have waited, but after the lengthy experience of searching (in vain) for a stain I really liked, it didn't seem like it would simply resolve itself in an acceptable time frame.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Front Porch
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No, it's the same house. We actually closed on it in October. Looks a little different now, but not by much. Been too busy this summer. All the lattice is gone from the front porch, the porches have been leveled, and a bunch of paint's been scraped, although we're far from finished! All the windows have been changed over to energy efficient windows, too. Also, right along the side of the house facing the camera from the front porch back, my wife's got a beautiful flower garden going. :-) Now if I could just make the porches safe to walk on! Deck Paint is also a film-forming finish and is slippery when wet, unless a fine, sandy aggregate is added to the product to make it slip resistant. I can do that. I've got a couple of bags of silica sand in the shed that I can mix in and more or less turn it into "non-skid".
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First - selling a house that has college students in it isn't a pretty endevour. As someone who has a lot of experience in the home sale industry I would caution against it, believe me you don't want college students handling 4 months of showings. About 2 weeks in they'll get annoyed and start scarring off any buyers. Second - seems like you kind have the wanna be house on the block. Like everything is just 'sort of' grand, not fantastic gingerbread to discover or otherwise invigorate you into remodeling. Although you can change this, I'm wondering if in your mind you'll always sort of have the 'jealous sister' house, and it will cause you to lose your momentum. I totally understand the desire to rehab a house, I love it. Find it incredibly rewarding and as much as I get annoyed with tripping around salvage yards and spending months/years on end hunting for the perfect replacement crystal for a chandelier, or the perfect toile wallpaper, etc I'm also in a different place in my life. My only concern is at this point 92k - 150k it sounds like you've put a ton of money it, in Chicago terms that looks like 45k in remodeling minimum. Something else to consider is that tax wise a rental can be a great break for you and your DH. Do you think that it would have the potential to be something that in 5 years-10 years when your child is older that you might want to take on as a project. Seems like a great space and wouldn't be something that you had to move out of because it wasn't the right size or has a bad location. Personally - I'd hold onto it. Hands down no question. College real estate is incredibly attractive.
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sacto_diane
11 years ago
I've found that Cabots/ATO have changed the formulation to make it VOC compliant. I had stained my deck with ATO and went to re-stain this summer and the new low VOC compliant formula does not match the previous. it sounds like all the interaction with Cabots was recent but I am bringing it up if you may have been testing with one and end up with the other at the end.

I've found to the new low VOC stain to not be the same as the old formula so I am switching to a different brand.

Diane
Jumpilotmdm
11 years ago
VOC compliance has created problems, real problems.
la_koala
11 years ago
VictoriaElizabeth, your blog link for Front Porch Part 3 was priceless!! I am so glad that I took the time to click on the link and read it this morning, when I've been so depressed looking at the hurricane news.

I love the image of you high kicking in front of Paul's speeding locomotive. (Though I admit to some envy that you have a man who can be so focused and driven to actually complete a project.)

I have to go to work now, or else I'd read parts 1 and 2. I'll bookmark them for later.

Thanks again for giving me a good laugh this morning!

--Lee
VictoriaElizabeth
Original Author
11 years ago
Lee- You totally made my day! Thank you!!

Diane- that sounds exactly like what happened to us.
sacto_diane
11 years ago
I clicked your links which failed to do before and sure enough you have the Cabots can with the blue lids. This is the new water based formula that is nothing like the original ATO. I great success with the original ATO on my IPE deck but I did a small test with the new formula on some test pieces and was very disappointed. I'm glad I tested before I used it.

Diane
VictoriaElizabeth
Original Author
11 years ago
I got an email from someone (through my blog, not through this site,) and he thinks that I will end up with peeling and other issues with the finish from what we used. His recommendation was just to oil it... which I had read about. And decided wasn't the best solution for us.

Aside from the fact that it's too late to change products, the oil didn't address one of our main concerns: there are parts of the deck that get full sun, and are exposed to all the weather, and those areas were definitely way more worn than the shaded parts... so we were looking for some protective UV coating, not the color.

It looks fine now, with the exception of not liking the color. I guess we'll see how it holds up...

Here is a link that might be useful: Our experience with Cabot stain.
VictoriaElizabeth
Original Author
10 years ago
One year later, the parts that get full sun/rain/snow have pretty much lost all color/coatingÃ¢ÂÂ¦ but the floor further under the roof that is protected is still bright orange.

We need to reseal some sections, but not others, and in retrospect, we should have used a colorless product because even if we reseal with the same color, itÃ¢ÂÂs still going to look totally different on the edges that have been exposed to weather/darkened.

Victorian Porch Renovation / Bad experience with Cabot Australian

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Victorian Porch Renovation / Bad experience with Cabot Australian

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