What to do about patchy-looking redwood deck?

Hello, In 1997 we had a beautiful redwood deck built in back of our Bay Area home. It's about 12' x 15'. We had it finished with two coats of Sikkens DEK base, and then six months later, as I recall, I applied a top coat of Sikkens Cetol DEK. Every fall since then I've applied another coat of Sikkens Cetol DEK topcoat to the flat boards, which receive much more wear than the railings and other vertical parts.

This year I inspected the deck and discovered that there are a lot of small areas where foot traffic, lounge chairs, the dog, etc., have caused the finish to flake away. This is especially pronounced along the edges of some of the boards. In accordance with Sikkens' instructions, I sanded these small areas down to bare wood and applied a new coating of Sikkens DEK base. The problem is that the newly refinished areas look light and reddish, whereas the areas that have been topcoated several times are considerably darker. It looks like a kind of weird patchwork.

In the meantime, since I live in California, the Sikkens DEK top coat product is now outlawed, because of apparently excessive VOC's. There apparently is a replacement product in the works called Sikkens "finish," and this is what I am supposed to use as a top coat from now on. However, because of the patchiness of the current combination of deck finishes I'm thinking that maybe it's time to take the whole finish off the deck and start over (next year).

Am I right? And if so, any suggestions as to what might be a better, more easily maintained deck finish than the system I've used until now? Keeping the deck rot-free is my primary goal here, with fabulous looks being secondary.

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Doug Greenberg
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