The Fastest and Easiest Way to Stain a Wood Fence

My husband recently rebuilt a small fence next to our house and let me tell you, he is SO proud of it. By the way he shows it off you’d think this was the most spectacular project he’d ever done (personally I think installing our bamboo floors was his greatest project) and the funny thing is that it’s not even our fence! We have an empty lot next to us where a house burnt down about 8 years ago. The previous fence was completely falling down so he tore it down and randomly decided to rebuild it a couple weekends ago. Personally I’m not one for spending $200+ on a fence that’s not even ours but after seeing how proud of it he is, I guess it was worth the money. (Make sure you read to the end because there’s a giveaway!)

We’ve owned a handful of houses since we’ve been married and honestly we’ve never taken the time to seal or stain a fence but Matt is so proud of this fence (I’m telling you, it’s hilarious) that we want to keep it looking nice for years to come. Since I love my HomeRight Finish Max Pro Fine Finish Sprayer so much, I thought I’d give it a try using it to stain the fence, because who wants to spend their weekend rolling stain on a fence, no thank you. 🙂

The Easiest way to Stain a Fence (or anything really), here’s what you need:

• HomeRight Paint Sprayer
• Stain (here’s what we used)
• Wood sealer
• Mineral Spirits (for the clean-up)

This post is sponsored by HomeRight but all opinions are my own, as always. I will always tell you if I think a product is just “okay” but if I tell you I love it then it means I really LOVE it!

Step #1 Picking out the stain

I enjoy picking out paint and stain colors so this is fun for me but I know for some it can be stressful. Unless you work with the product a lot it’s hard to know what it’s going to look like when it’s actually on your fence, as opposed to the sample in the store. If you aren’t sure what color to pick take a picture and ask one of the sales associates to help you. For our project I chose Minwax Red Mahogany stain color because I wanted to coordinate with the red brick on our house. I know it’s not technically our fence but our house is the only one there so I think it’s important for it to look good standing next to it. 🙂

Step #2 Load the sprayer

Once you’ve picked out the perfect stain, get the paint sprayer all set up. Pour the stain into the paint container and attach the spray gun. Set the gun to the spray pattern you want to use.

Step #3 Staining

Just like you would if you were rolling the stain on, spray the stain on in the direction of the grain. Since the grain on the fence goes up and down Matt used vertical strokes to apply it.

 

If you want the stain to be darker apply multiple coats. We applied 2 coats to our fence to get the color we wanted.

Step #4 Sealer

This step is optional but I want to make sure our fence stays looking nice for a long time so we decided to take the extra step and go ahead and seal it while we were at it.

Pour the remaining stain back into the container. Once most of it is out of the paint container add the sealer. I didn’t clean it out in between because I figured a little extra stain wouldn’t be bad.

Apply the sealer the same way you applied the stain, using strokes that follow the direction of the grain. Once you’ve finished applying the sealer pour the remainder back into it’s container.

Using the Finish Max Pro Fine Finish Sprayer made this project go SO fast! From start to finish the whole thing only took us about 30 minutes, isn’t that amazing?!

Here’s a little video to show you exactly how fast and easy it was.

Step #5 Clean up

Rinse the paint container out with water to get any remaining stain or sealer out. The trick to making clean up super easy is this magic, it’s called Mineral Spirits.

Pour Mineral Spirits into the paint container, cover the top with your hand and shake it really well. After shaking it well empty the paint container, rinse it with warm water and set it aside. Pour a couple inches of Mineral Spirits into the container.

Next unscrew all the parts of the spray nozzle and remove the pick up tube, rinse them with warm water and place them in the paint container with the Mineral Spirits. Let them soak while you clean the body of the sprayer and then use an old toothbrush or a small scrub brush to scrub the stain off of them. You’ll find that the stain comes off really easily so you should need to do very much scrubbing.

While the little parts are soaking run warm water through the sprayer to rinse the majority of the stain out. then pour Mineral Spirits though the sprayer to clean out the inside. Use a toothbrush or small scrub brush, and a little Mineral Spirits, to clean all the little nooks and crannies of the sprayer. Once the water runs clear (should only take a couple rinses) set the sprayer aside to dry.

This project was so easy even my husband was shocked! He kept telling me I was genius to think to use the Finish Max Pro Fine Finish Sprayer and then he was equally shocked at how easy it was to clean up! So if you have a staining project you’ve been putting off because the thought of it is too daunting, don’t wait any longer!

Did you know this is one of my most popular posts!? To see more of the posts people love click on the titles below:

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• The BEST Moscow Mule

 

For your convenience this post contains some affiliate links. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

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