0:00
So in this video I want to explain something a little out of the ordinary
0:03
that I'm going to be doing to these brand new white cedar shingles that I've
0:08
installed on this shed. I've made several videos about refurbishing this old, what
0:13
is it now, 33 year old shed and I want to do some finishing now. You might be
0:20
wondering why would I want to put anything on these shingles because they look so nice and they do. If I could do something that would keep these shingles
0:27
looking the way they are now forever or for at least a long time I would do it
0:32
but I can't. What I am doing, what I have done, is to put a clear sealer on the
0:39
window trim and the corner boards. This should keep the wood looking like that
0:44
for about three or four years and when it does get gray because those pieces
0:50
are flat I can sand them and then re-establish that kind of lighter look
0:56
I won't be able to do that on these shingles just because of the texture of them of course. I could just leave the shingles the way they are but there's a
1:05
problem with that. What's going to happen is I'm going to get lots of weathering on on the bottom. The closer to the ground the more weathering I'm going to
1:11
get and then as I get up under the eaves there's not going to be very much
1:16
weathering at all. In fact here on the north side of the shed under the eaves
1:20
those top shingles would probably not change color at all. So you get this
1:25
really ratty looking variation where you got black shingles on the bottom and
1:29
very light shingles on the top and I really don't like that look. So I'm going
1:34
to do something and I'm going to show it to you now. You only ever have to do it once and it creates a kind of an even dark brown dark gray kind of look and
1:46
and it's even that's one thing and it it never needs to be redone. There's
1:52
nothing to peel. It's really a kind of a non-toxic chemical treatment that does
1:58
this job and that's this is what I'm going to use. I've used this for a long
2:02
time now probably more than 20 years. I'm going to mix it up for you. It's a
2:06
powder that you mix with water and then you spray it on. You just have to wet the
2:11
surface because like I said it's not a conventional finish and that there's a
2:15
film that has to dry or anything like that. This is a chemical treatment of the
2:21
wood that makes makes it an even color, makes it look good. They tell me that it
2:27
offers some rot resistance too. I'm not sure that's very hard to verify and
2:31
these are cedar shingles, white cedar shingles, so they don't really need rot
2:35
protection anyway. They're gonna last for 40 or 50 years or longer. So let's go
2:40
over. I'll load up the sprayer and I'll show you how the process begins. As I
2:45
mentioned this is a powder. It dissolves in water. Envelopes of this size make up
2:55
one gallon and one gallon covers about a hundred and fifty square feet. I'll take a
3:00
look at it here. There's no smell and it's non-toxic. I don't think I'd eat it but
3:09
you don't have to worry about it hurting you. I'm gonna be making three
3:15
envelopes of this stuff. I think that should do the job and as I said you just
3:21
have to get this onto the surface in any way that works. So I'm using
3:29
this pretty fancy gas-powered backpack sprayer. You don't need anything this fancy. My regular pump-up sprayer that I use for this sort of thing has some stuff in
3:40
it right now. So I'm getting out the big guns. Our job is just to simply wet
3:46
the surface with this. Make sure it's thoroughly wet and then we stand back and watch the
3:52
changes happen. The changes kind of happen pretty quickly, right? It varies. It's funny, I
4:02
don't know why it varies. I think it has to do partially with the species of wood
4:08
and whether there's any mill glaze, any burnishing on the surface that prevents
4:14
absorption. White cedar shingles seem to be pretty responsive. They have been in
4:20
the past. They were at my place. Yes, they're very responsive. So I think we're gonna see some
4:26
changes this afternoon. You don't see the full change until several months later and it can be
4:33
quite striking but it's not gonna happen too fast. That should be enough. I'll fire up the sprayer
4:43
and we'll go and get busy. So here we are 24 hours later and I've intentionally left the north side of the
5:27
shed unsprayed. This is what you saw me do yesterday. This is the stuff I'm gonna do in
5:35
a few minutes when I get off the camera here just to finish the job. But of course this is not the
5:40
extent of the change. It's actually much more dramatic than this as time goes on and as you'll
5:47
see. This is what the treatment looks like when it's fully mature. This is the same white cedar
5:52
shingles, exactly the same as you saw in the shed. This was sprayed six years ago. It didn't take six
5:59
years to get to look like this. It probably got this way after two or three months. Then it was
6:05
stabilized. But you can see that it's an even weathered color and the effect goes right up to
6:13
the eaves which is really the main reason to do this. You want even weathering because it just
6:20
looks really good bottom line. Well thank you for joining me. I hope you've found this
6:51
video useful for some outdoor projects you've got at your place. If you're watching on YouTube
6:56
give me a like. If you've liked the video, subscribe. Hit the notifications bell so you
7:01
know when I put out new videos. And check out my website. The URL is in the description box and
7:07
you can sign up for my Saturday morning newsletter. We just broke 29,000 subscribers. A lot of people
7:12
like it and I think you will too