Buster Oxford Brown

I started staining the shingles in the back of the house yesterday and I am totally sold on stain. Not having to scrape or heat gun off the old stuff was enough to convince me! I have to admit I did need to change a few techniques right away, but once I did things went smoothly.

The first change is to hold the brush closer to the bristles and at more of an angle. Since the stainis so much thinner than paint it really does run if you’re not careful. The other change is that rather than paint horizontally across a course I need to do more of an up and down motion to get the stain to penetrate into the grooves of the shingles.

I started at the back door and worked toward the driveway. Here is the first couple of shingles with stain:




The color is "Oxford Brown" which seems pretty close to the color that has always been on it, but since the last time it was stained was 1984, it has faded a little. Here is a shot after I got to the first set of windows:





You can't see it above, but the places where I patched the woodpecker holes are still shiny and do show up, but I will live with it.



Here is a close up of the patch I demonstrated on in the last post:





The other thing I notice it that everywhere that the previous painter slopped white trim paint is now VERY noticeable. I do have a quart of paint that matches the stain, so I'll probably just carefully cover them.