If you got caught by surprise and it rained after you stained your deck, then you’re gonna want to read this really quickly before it’s too late…

Here’s what you need to know…

If your stain has been down for less than 30 minutes, you need to grab a bunch of rags, get down on your hands and knees and then start wiping…

You need to wipe off all of the deck stain that you just applied…

Now, you won’t remove all of the stain because it will have started to soak into the surface, but you will remove anything that hasn’t dried…

In most cases, you started to stain your deck because you didn’t think it would rain, right?

So if you get caught in this situation, the rain will usually be a light shower and not a complete downpour…

So wipe up all of the stain that you can and then once the rain stops, continue to wipe your deck until it has no water sitting on it…

Now all you can do is let it dry off…

This is what I would do if you used a water based or oil based deck stain…

That’s’ exactly what happened to me with this deck I was staining…

A light shower came over and started to blotch up the stain I was applying…

And see that huge glass door behind the deck?

Yeah well, the owner sat there and watched me frantically try to save their deck as the rain started to come down…

I did exactly what I laid out for you here and it turned out great…

See, not a single sign of rain damage…

But if it rained after you stained your deck, it could be worse if your deck stain has been down longer but hasn’t quite dried yet…

Your plan of attack is slightly different…

Let’s look at that now…

Did it rain while you were staining for more than 1 hour?

If you used an oil based deck stain and it has been over 1 hour since you applied the stain, I would still try to wipe it down with rags…

Oil based deck stain takes much longer to dry so it could still be wet enough to wipe off with rags…

But I wouldn’t hold my breath…

Oil and water don’t mix very well so if the oil stain hasn’t dried and it rains, you will most likely have to wait it out and see how it looks when it stops raining…

You’ll most likely have blotchy raindrop marks where the rain was sitting on your wet deck stain…

But what about if you used a water based deck stain?

Well, after about an hour most water based stains are touch dry…

Which means that you can’t wipe them off…

But at this stage, they aren’t completely dry so any rain will turn them blotchy…

What can you do?

Just wait for it to stop raining and then assess the damage…

That’s all you can do at this stage…

But don’t worry, I’ll show you how you can fix it…

But before we get into that…

What to do if it rained 3 or more hours after you stained…

The great news is, if your deck stain is able to dry for 3 hours and then it rains, you should have no problems at all…

As long as you followed the rules and stained your deck properly…

But usually, most deck stain will be able to handle rain after 3 or 4 hours after application…

Of course if you used an oil based deck stain, it might take 2 days before it’s dry enough for rain…

That’s one of the reasons I prefer water based over oil based, but that’s a discussion for another day…

Either way, after 3 hours all you can do is wait and see how your deck stain looks once it’s stopped raining…

There’s not much you can do at this stage…

What to do if your deck stain has been ruined by rain…

Once the rain stops and you can get back out there, you need to check for blotchy marks on your deck…

If you have any blotches, they aren’t just going to disappear…

You have to remove them…

The way I look at it is you have 2 options…

The first one is…

You’ll need to lightly sand your deck …

What you wanna do is, take 80 grit sandpaper blocks and just rub it over the surface of your deck…

The deck stain will still be quite soft and easy to remove so you can rub it down by hand…

You’ll need to spend a little more time on the blotchy spots but the idea is to rub it down until the marks disappear…

But make sure you lightly rub the entire deck, not just the blotchy marks…

At this point you need to assess how much rubbing you had to do to get rid of the marks…

If a light rub down was enough to remove the marks all you have to do is remove all of the dust from your deck and give it another coat of deck stain…

It should look as good as new…

But for the love of Zues, make sure it’s not going to rain…

We don’t want to be making that mistake again…

Now, if you had to rub it back to bare timber and now you have some sections that are stained and other sections that are bare timber then a light rub down isn’t enough…

You’ll need the next option…

You need to completely sand your deck…

I know you don’t want to hear this but, if some sections of your deck are sanded and some sections are stained, you can’t just apply another coat of stain to blend these sections together..

Well you can, I can’t stop you but it’s not a good idea…

I’ve actually done this on a client’s deck, at their request…

We had to sand only the weathered sections and stain them to blend in with the existing stain…

At first it looked flawless…

The client was really happy, and to be honest, I was shocked at how great it looked…

You could barely see any difference…

I started thinking that I could offer this as an alternative to completely sanding a deck…

No other company was offering this as an option…

And for good reason…

As the deck was exposed to the weather, the sanded spots weathered differently to the rest of the deck…

So after 3 months, those sanded spots stood out like a sore thumb…

My gosh it looked so ugly…

It was embarrassing to put my name to it…

Even though it was what the customer wanted…

Needless to say, we were back there 3 months later to sand it all off and do it properly…

So if it does rain after you stain your deck and it does get damaged that can’t be fixed with a light rub down, make sure you sand your deck completely and start again…

But if a light rub removes the damage, then you’re free to apply another coat of stain…

So if it rained after you stained your deck, that’s about all there is to it…

Now grab your rags, get out there and save your deck…

If it rained after you stained your deck, it’s not the end of the world…

It happens all the time…

Just never twice to the same person…

Anyway, simply follow the steps I’ve laid out for you here in this guide and no one will ever be able to tell that your deck was ruined by the rain…

Peace,

Jason

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