Some examples of the challenges with trying to stain vs paint.
All stain is designed to penetrate the wood fibers and leave wood texture and/or grain showing.
Solid stain is able to be applied over top of existing products. For example a pealing deck with semi solid stain still left in places. Near impossible to return to a uniform semi-solid coat because you can still see grain so a solid stain would make sense here. However adhesion is an issue because it cant soak into the fibers of the wood if there is still a previous product on there. Pealing in a year or 2 is likely and many painters just tell clients it has to be done every other year.
Peal Bond primer adhesion is superior to anything else, for any surface, regardless of condition.
To fully seal up the house a paintable sealant is the only solution short of a carpenter re-doing the entire exterior.
This wood surface would be hard to get to accept stain of any kind. The one on the left is a solid stain, the one on the right is a semi-solid.
You can see the sheen on the siding meaning, again, difficult to achieve adhesion. Plus there are 6 different colors and or products represented in this one picture. Meaning no matter what I do, to make it uniform, it should be primed.
Couple of places where there is still raw wood. Would accept stain after a good pressure wash with chemicals.
Now for the main event. I really want to seal this house up for good. I love the property, and the landscaping, and the setting. I want to do it right. I want to offer 75% off labor on the task of sealing because it would be incredibly satisfying for me. There are just a hand full of places where wood replacement would be required (such as the bird holes) but the rest can be “creatively” glued together with Quad ISO sealant. After priming of course. I believe that it would be very difficult for a bird or whatever to tear through 6mm of latex primer and another 2mm of paint. It would be like rubber. Quad ISO can’t be stained, but you can paint it. Further supporting the argument for paint and prime.
The rest of the pictures I took. First 2 show some of different conditions the wood. And one kind of showing the deck. I can offer to pressure wash that and spray a solid stain on it for not much cost. It might peal in a year or 2 but hey it’s just a deck. And it might not.
