Over the weekend, the wife and I put on Cabot 1407 opaque oil-based stain on the floor of the deck. At the recommendation of the person who recommended the stuff to her at Lowe's, she now wants to put on Thompson's watersealer. Is this necessary? Cabot claims to be waterproof.
Over the years, Thompson's products have gotten poor reviews from Consumer Reports and contributors to this NG. Check out the archives and then decide, but if you take a salesclerk's advice over the experience of many more qualified people, you may be quite disappointed. HTH
Joe
Is this an exterior deck, is the Cabots a just a stain or exterior deck treatment. Thompsons is maybe the worst product made, call cabots and just use their products to finish the job. Thompsons was so bad Consumer Reports dropped it off their long term test years ago, Thompsons has wax in it, wax will give you adhesion issues over the years when you redo the deck again.
I agree that Thompsons is not a quality product. I use Cabots Decking stain and it works well applied as the manufacturer directs.
Sorry to hear Cabots is now available in big box stores. I have previously had good results with Cabot products. I wonder how much the quality has gone down?
Thompsoms watersealer is testimony that if you market something intensively even if it is the most useless concoction made people will believe it works. Their "watersealer" is a complete waste of time.
Thompson's is little more than paraffin. I used it once almost 20 years ago and still regret it.
Cabot used to be a good product. I hope it still is.
My worry is that the big box stores seem to be able to convince manufacturers to cheapen a product yet still retain the branding of their formerly good product.
The big box stores get their profit from volume retail selling, which also benefits the manufacturers for their volume wholesale selling, and therefore, are willing to lower their wholesale prices to those big box stores. I've bought the same color Cabots from a small hardware/paint store and also from the big box stores (Lowes). They are no different in quality that I noticed. BTW, the small stores, with their small storage areas, usually only carry the Cabots base, and they have to tint it with the final color. The big box stores carry the color stain already mixed.
If it were only that simple. Quite often when the big box stores get to be the major seller of something they name the price they will pay for a product. Then the manufacturer has only two choices (three actually), Become benevolent, stop selling or cheapen the product to meet the big box price offer.
You meant stop selling to the big box stores, right? The big box stores can contract the manufacturer to have them make a cheaper version of the product, but I doubt that the manufacturer will want their name on a cheaper product. Ergo, Store brands.
Here's a link to the story of why Snapper quit selling to Walmart. It's documentation for your point.
A fascinating and fair article...thanks, Steve.
Joe
Unnecessary to add the Thomsons.
But I think you will regret the solid color stain despite Consumer Reports test results. It must be removed to recoat. Tell me how do you do that?
Yes
The cheapened version of the product doesn't necessarily need to be a store brand. In some cases if they want to keep selling to the big box they have to cheapen their branded product.
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