DEFY Stain Stripper

I used a semi-transparent stain on my deck 3 years ago. My paint sprayer started leaking and the stain dripped everywhere. I though it wouldn't be noticeable when it dried. I was very wrong. Splotches everywhere and on my off white vinyl siding. (red/brown color). I tried power washing it off without any success. I said I was going to strip it off, but never got around to it. Now, because of the pandemic, I have a lot of time on my hands at home. I followed the instructions carefully. It tremoved 95% of the stain in one application. I did remove with a power washer with a rotary accessory. Some areas I had to go back over with a stronger pressure head. I spot treated some areas that were particularly splotchy that did not come clean the first time and was able to get them off.It is not recommended for vinyl siding but I tried it anyway. It worked fine. It took 3 or 4 applications in one really bad area. It did not discolor or strip the color off the siding. I make no promises for your siding.When I removed the stripper with the power washer, the stripper and removed stain foamed up. It was a bit hard to tell which areas were fully stripped. I tried to clean the stuff off the deck with lower pressure, but there was a lot of foamy mess. (my deck is 540 sq ft) Some light foaminess remained. That dried into a film on the deck that required a second round of power washing with my rotary head. It was still more than worth it.1 gallon only goes so far. My 540 sq ft took took 5 gallons. That includes enough to retreat some spots and for the vinyl siding. It says it covers 100-150 sq ft per gallon. That's very accurate.

Worked good no issues I would recommend this item to anybody who’s doing the job of stripping their deck

Very disappointed with this product. It did not remove the stain the way it claims to, even after following the instructions carefully. I had to scrub excessively and still ended up with uneven results.

This stuff worked great, easy to apply and removed 95% of the previous stain we had on our older deck.

Wet the deck boards. Apply the stripper with a garden sprayer. Here's the key keep it wet for 30 minutes. After about 10 minutes while it's wet use your scrubber brush on each board and you will remove a black goo. I did five boards at a time.After 30 minutes rinse it, and rinse it, and rinse it.Then reapply just like you did the first time. And use your scrub brush after 10 minutes again. At the end of 30 minutes rinse it a lot.Then apply the brightener in a garden sprayer and keep it wet for about 20 minutes. You can use your brush to rub it in.Do not get your hands wet with either product and continually rinse your hands and the sprayer and your brush. Rinse anywhere you over sprayed just keep it off where it doesn't belong.Then I went to lunch and came back and 2 hours later everything was gone and the wood was bright. It works if it doesn't work you're doing something wrong. Great product.Bonus. If your sprinklers leave a stain on the siding on your house, the brightener will remove itJust spray it on and brush it off. Those rusty stains will disappear right in front of your eyes.Remember these are caustic and acid-based products. Put on your safety glasses and keep a towel handy and continually rinse your hands otherwise you will get a nasty little boo boo.

I will start with the positive: this product does what it says. If you follow the instructions, this product will strip stain off of wood. It is strong enough that if you don't use gloves, you will eventually start burning your hands. It is a potent chemical that does work.The problem is, it doesn't strip ALL of the stain. I have gone over various areas of the wooden ramp multiple times, and there's always leftover stain somewhere. If you only use this product, you will have splotchy areas of old stain that will stubbornly not come off.There is another issue: the instructions say that you either use a pressure washer, or a brush to take the stain off after the product has had time to work on the stain. I used a pressure washer. I do not know what the experience would be with a brush, but the pressure washer has to be used at such a close range that you will flake the wood in various areas. It is basically unavoidable. You will need to go back and sand these areas in preparation of applying new stain.Another issue is that you will spend a large amount of time rinsing the product out of the wood. There is a soapy residue that will need to be cleaned perhaps over a dozen times before it is completely out of the wood. Perhaps the product should be left in the wood, but I have purchased the separate brightener so I want the deck to be as clean as possible.In my opinion, you are better off skipping this product and just going through the effort of using a power sander with a very abrasive grit. I purchased 14 gallons of this product and have used 13. I still need to go over the entire ramp and sand rough areas. I've spent countless hours applying this product, waiting for it to work, pressure washing the stain off of the wood, then rinsing the product off of the ramp. I would have saved both time and money if I just used a sander from the beginning. It might be physically more difficult, but you can be sure that all of the stain is removed, and that you have a quality surface which is ready for new stain.

We have a really challenging stain situation. Five years ago, we had a general contractor apply Sikkens (now part of PPG) Log & Siding stain on our split log siding. This is a semi-transparent oil stain. The problem is, the wood wasn't cleaned and prepped properly after they power washed the old stain off, so the end result of the stain is that it's way darker than it should be, and there is wood fuzz/felting everywhere from the aggressive power washing. It's looked pretty bad for five years.Since Sikkens is a five-year stain, we decided that this year, we'd clean the wood and re-apply the stain properly, doing one side of the house at a time. The problem is, Sikkens is a VERY hard to remove stain. In an effort to try to clean the old stain off, I ordered a gallon of this Defy stain stripper from Amazon. I followed the directions, let the stripper dwell on the wood (wet) for 20-25 minutes, and then power washed it off. While I could tell the Defy was doing something (running your fingers over the siding after application, you could see the Sikkens stain color coming off on your fingers), after the wood dried, it didn't look like any stain had been removed at all - the color looked the same!After one application of Defy and no results, I emailed Defy's customer service (parent company: SaverSystems), explained the problem I was having, and asked some questions. The lady I spoke to, Tricia, wrote me back the same day and answered my questions. She said that yes, you could apply multiple applications of their stain stripper without damaging the wood. She was very apologetic and even offered to send me an extra gallon of stain stripper to help me finish the job. I said, "cool, send it on!" Note that I also emailed Sikkens and asked them how the heck I'm supposed to remove their stain. They never responded.A week later, I received not just one gallon of free Defy stain stripper, but 10 gallons! And a couple of gallons of their wood brightener! I was amazed at the extra mile this company went to try to help me with this impossible project.In the end, on the one side of the house I worked on, I actually wound up having to hand sand (random orbit sander) off the Sikkens stain. No stain stripper wouldn't remove the Sikkens (I tried a different brand's, as well). But if you have normal, non-hardcore Sikkens stain to remove, I would highly recommend Defy's stain stripper because 1) it does seem to dissolve oil-based stain, just not ours, and 2) their customer service is out of this world amazing.

Worked great on the flat surfaces but not as good on the vertical surfaces. Probably would have done the job if I let it sit on the vertical surfaces longer. Easy to spray on and wash off with a pressure washer.