Expert: Eileen Cronk - 7/29/2009

Question
QUESTION: Home has 1962 Anderson wood casement windows. VERY good condition (so I don,t want to replace). Wood is REDWOOD,always stained every 2-3 years with Water Lox (manufacturer)redwood stain by previous owner.Local contractor was hired to re-stain and told what to use. He used P.R.O.V.T.100% acrylic solid color stain, scraped the windows,no primer,(no other prepthat I(remember),then "painted".Needless to say, it started to peel after 2-3 months. Is there any way to fix this besides going to bare wood?Please give brand names for any products I would need.Thanx so much!

ANSWER: Hi Sheila
Nice to hear from you.
So if I read this correctly, whats happened is the contractor used water based solid color stain over the oil based redwood stain and it is peeling off..correct?
What a shame the painting regiment that was originally established was not continued.
But you are stuck with a mess that unfortunately has no easy solution.
The windows will need to be scraped of all loose paint.
The only brand name is "elbow grease" LOL. And forgive me as I realize this is no laughing matter.
Then go back to using the original Water Lox.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hello again Eileen.  Thanx for getting back to me so quickly. So I don't need to get ALL of the new stain off before going back yo Water Lox?

Answer
Hi again Sheila
In a perfect world I would say remove everything.
But this is a tremendous amount of work so I am telling you to get everything off that will come off by scraping.
Using oil based over residue waterbased is better than using water based over oil. It has a far better chance of sticking.
As time passes, you will of course be watchful that no bare wood is exposed if the odd bit fails.
I can hardly believe these wood windows lasted this long. It says a lot about proper maintenance.
Good Luck
Eileen