How to Clean and Refinish a Mangaris Red Balau Fence

Okay, so this is a decent-size fence that runs the length of his front yard, and it has weathered unsightly. As you can see, we’ve got some black mold buildup here. Take a look at the horizontal surfaces which face up—these weather at a faster rate, and you’ve got a decent amount of black mold that has lodged itself there. If you take a look here, the back side has a little more color than the front side. I’m sure this afternoon sun over here beats down on it probably from 1:00 till about 6 or 7:00. This side here is blocked by the trees and it has more color, so things are going to weather at a faster rate depending on how much sun exposure it gets. Take a look at this beautiful fence—it doesn’t look so beautiful now, but it was built really well and it just looks unsightly.

Okay, something else I wanted to point out is take a look at—obviously this fence is weathered—but take a look at the colors of the boards. It’s weathered, and you can see dramatic differences between these two, these four, these two over here, and this is natural. As you go down, you’ll see lots of varying colors of boards, and obviously that’s because the boards come from different trees, and so they’re not going to match exactly. They’re not meant to match exactly—that’s the beauty of having a natural wood fence such as this Mangaris Red Balau fence. Once we sand it down and get the sealer on, you’re going to see beautiful color variants, and I think it’s absolutely beautiful to see that color variance. Most people love it—some people, you know, they might want it to look like some sort of synthetic or plastic indoor floor, and that’s—it’s not meant to look like that. That’s why you get this, because it’s natural wood.

Okay guys, so I just wanted to point out the horizontal surfaces weather at a faster rate than the verticals. This is still weathered on this vertical side, but it’s not as bad as what faces up. Then if you go over here, this has more color, and it’s just par for the course because it faces up and it gets lots of UV—everything that lands on it, moisture—and it’s just going to weather at a faster rate. So you’re going to see this portion here weather at a quicker rate, so it might need maintenance sooner than the vertical areas.

Also, to be thorough, we’ve got a couple things going on here with the screws. These appear to be anodized deck screws, but you know, God knows where they got them from. You can see that there’s bleed from them—that’s this black spot that’s coming out here, here, on the screws. You can see it over here as well—not as bad—but it’s screw bleed, because I mean these appear to be deck anodized deck screws, but when water hits the metal it reacts with the wood and you have this bleed. So we’ll remove all that, at least most of it, but it may come back because these screws appear to not be the best screws.

Here we’ve also got some areas that look like they have been coated with the end-seal petroleum product. So in theory, you’re supposed to dip these edges—or some people do—in this petroleum-based product, and it’s supposed to prevent things like this. Well, obviously it didn’t. You still see some opening, expanding, and contracting of the wood, but what it does is it leaves this petroleum product here that is a nightmare to remove and can’t be removed because it’s penetrated so deep into the wood. It’ll be minimized, but once we get the finish on there you might see this outline here, even if we sand it and clean it. So we just wanted to bring that to your attention.

If it was me, I wouldn’t dip the ends of my boards in this because you are going to get this outline no matter how careful you are on only getting it on the edge—it’s still going to bleed into the wood and it’s unsightly, and at least in my opinion, again it’s an opinion, hopefully that’s okay to have, I wouldn’t do it. I don’t see that it offers any more protection and it, you know, quite honestly it’s pretty rare to see people add that. But I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Okay guys, just like we do at every job, we want to make sure that we document and let the customer know about things before we begin in terms of damages or things that aren’t, you know, part of the job. And you know, we’ve got the fence and the gate here that ends here, we’ve got some separation here on the stucco, you’ve got pieces of stucco here at the bottom, some cracks on the stucco filler, and then we’ve got, you know, different patches and drips of paint and things here on the ground. So we just want to make sure that we document all of that type of stuff because when we come, as you can see, we are protecting everything we’re working around and we’re very careful. Sometimes other people, other contractors, aren’t—who knows—but you know, we definitely want to make sure that we bring this type of major stuff to the client’s attention.

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Okay guys, so we have the entire front portion of the fence fully cleaned, and what a difference—I mean, look at that beautiful wood. We knocked off all those contaminants and all of that black moldy, mildewy stuff. Now it’s not perfect—as you can see here down towards the bottom, it’s still kind of dark. I mean, that’s probably a lot of it has to do with the color of the wood, but I mean, what a difference! And you know, I just want to point out, cleaning alone isn’t refinishing. You have a lot of blow-and-go finishing pros out there that’ll come out and give people an option to just water blast and clean the wood and just slap some sealer on there. And yeah, you’ll get a color finish, but you have a microscopic layer of dead oxidized wood that wasn’t removed, so you’re not going to have the finish penetrate as good as it could and last—and that’s a main component. I mean, who wants to do this and have something not last? So don’t listen to that evil, disgusting blow-and-go finishing pro trying to make a quick buck. Do it the right way, and you know, that’s what we’re trying to convey here in this message. But wow, look at this beautiful color already.

Okay guys, so here is the fence cleaned—look at that difference. It’s been cleaned and it is dry now, it’s not wet anymore. We did sand that little area here—one of our guys got overzealous. Take a look at the color variant on the boards—that’s natural. But just with cleaning, take a look at that. Now it is still gray and oxidized when you zoom in, and that microscopic layer needs to come off—it needs to come off of here. You still have some water spots, things like that. You still have the remnants of the screw bleed and stuff like that, so definitely this still needs to be sanded.

Again, no blow-and-go finishing pros here in terms of cutting corners—that’s not the Teak Master way. And we’re here to convey the message on doing everything the right way, and that is by sanding. Again, it’s just a light sand—we are not taking away from the life of the wood or anything like that. This can be sanded a hundred times with a light grit sandpaper and you wouldn’t even know the difference—at least when we do it. So contrary to popular belief, this can be sanded, and that’s the right way to do it because you know what? We’re going for perfection—hopefully that’s okay.

Okay guys, so we have the entire fence sanded and we went ahead and applied the wood brightener to half of the fence. Take a look at this half here, and then the other half over here. So you’ve got this half here that hasn’t been brightened, and where you see this line here, you’ve got the other half that’s been brightened. Look at that difference in applying wood brightener. You should hose off the fence, keep it wet, and then you can use a pump sprayer or a weenie roller or a rag and you can apply the brightener. You can let it sit for a little while and then you can neutralize it by adding more water and hosing it down. But look at that beautiful color here of the Mangaris Red Balau—it’s back to new condition. You can see that mostly all of that screw bleed is gone, and it’s just back to beautiful raw wood, and it’s ready to have the sealer applied. One more time, look at that difference right there—right here on the right, not brightened; here on the left, brightened. It’s a big difference—it’s absolutely necessary.

Okay guys, there you have it. Everything has been brightened, and look at that color—that’s good lighting right there. What a difference, and that’s the beauty of this wood and that’s the beauty of proper technique. There’s no way to skip it without compromise, so it’s always best to stick to what works. If you want to compromise, I guess that’s okay, but that’s not Teak Master. Absolutely stunning, beautiful, ready to go, ready for the next step and the final step, which is applying the penetrating oil finish.

Okay, so he’s done this small section here, and now what he’s doing is he’s wiping off the excess. We’ve let it sit for a certain period of time, and you know, I think contrary to popular belief, you really need to know what you’re doing in terms of letting it sit for the correct period of time. Your temperature outside and your surface temperature are going to dictate a little bit on when you’re supposed to wipe off the excess. I’d say a good 15–20 minutes tops is going to allow the finish to penetrate to its full potential. You don’t want it to dry where it hasn’t been wiped off because it could become sticky or it could flash in certain areas that are hotter than other areas and again become stickier or blotchy even.

So, I mean, the penetrating solvents on this penetrate immediately. I mean, it penetrates into concrete and the metal sometimes, so you know it’s going to penetrate. Plus, with the technique that we did—sanding and cleaning and brightening and all that type of stuff—it’s going to penetrate pretty darn quickly to its full potential. So he’s wiping off the excess because, you know, the wood’s going to only accept as much as it can accept. So it’s not a layered finish—it’s a penetrating, saturating finish. And look how beautiful that is—absolutely stunning.

And here we have it—the finished product. What an amazing wood, what an amazing fence. The before looks so bad, and then the after just looks absolutely stunning—such a beautiful curb appeal. And this is what we do. We’ve been doing this type of work for 25 years, so we really hope that you enjoyed this video. Take a look at our website, teakmaster.com, full of a wealth of information on refinishing exterior wood surfaces just like this. Go ahead and click that like button if you like what you saw. Go ahead and follow us because we’re coming out with videos just like this more often. Go ahead and comment if you have any questions or if you have your own techniques or if you see anything that we can do differently—we’d love to hear from you. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Tim Gilliam with Teak Master, signing out.