Zeke has been a tremendous help to me the past few days, and I'm thrilled I met him, to help me select a custom fence stain. While I had initially hired a fence & gate contractor to stain & seal my new fence & gate that they built on Fri 10/20, when that deal/job fell through (see that Yelp review), I was left in a lurch to find a different fence stain, and hire a new contractor. After extensive hours spent this weekend - Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon learning far more than I ever wanted or intended to learn about the differences between wood types (cedar vs. else) and fence stains (water-based vs. oil-based) at Home Depot & Sherwin Williams, as well as through my mom's real estate friend, as well as her daughter in Boise, ID, who worked for a fence stainer, and her consulting with her former boss, after talking to nearly ~10 people, only Zeke was able to quickly, clearly, and concisely cut through the decision-making process for me, and guide me to a custom stain selection.
Lessons Learned:
1. Water-based stains last approximately 3-5 years, so if I had gone with the Behr initial water-based samples from Home Depot, I'd be back in this same position relatively soon. Do not want this! Luckily, Home Depot offered to allow me to return those samples, which I did yesterday.
2. Zeke helped me understand the difference between transparent vs. semi-transparent, and another third type (which I cannot recall) within the modified-oil based stains, since this is the type Colorado allows paint stores to sell, due to environmental reasons.
3. Once we narrowed this down, Zeke helped custom color match the photo I posted here, as we tried & tested various options on the cedar pickets I purchased & sawed into sections at Home Depot vs. testing directly on my new fence & gate.
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If all goes well, I should have this custom stain applied to my brand new fence & gate tomorrow, by my second contractor, who confirmed the job today via text, and if - for some odd reason - that deal/job falls through, I have 3 other contractors available & on stand-by.
Stay tuned for results! :-)
And come to this location, and ask for Zeke, should you find yourself in a similar situation. read more