cedar soft wash · Pine Mountain, GA

cedar soft wash in Pine Mountain

In Pine Mountain, this comes up on Callaway-side cottages, guest houses, and shaded second homes. Pines and hardwoods feed algae on roofs that do not see full sun. Shaded cedar goes black. Sun-bleached cedar goes gray. Only one of those is a mildew problem.

Owners are often somewhere else. The house still has to look kept when they drive up.

Mildew on cedar, pine, and stained decks is organic, so sodium hypochlorite can kill it. The limit is the wood. A strong mix, or a nozzle that is too close, raises the grain, stripes the stain, and leaves the board furry. We use a lighter hand, a longer dwell, and a rinse that is not a carving tool.

Gray, UV-bleached wood is not dirt. Cleaning it will not restore the color from the lumberyard. If you want color, that is a stain, on a dry day, after the wash has actually dried. We do not stain wet wood so the job can fit on one invoice.

Soft boards, popped nails, and a rail that moves get called out before a stain would hide them. We do not rebuild the deck. If the shakes on a roof are cupped and brittle, we will say replacement is the spend. Washing dead wood is a way to charge you for a photograph.

The full explanation, without the town attached, is the cedar and wood: kill the mildew, do not raise the grain article. The town does not change the chemistry. It changes the houses, the shade, and the clay.

Cedar and shake wash in Pine Mountain →