Today's orders are to sort out treating our year-old front fence. This is because she has met and chatted to a neighbour who was creosote-subtituting his. Our fence is on a curve and stands out as you enter the road.
Our fence is tanalised and has bits of decorative latticey stuff on top, and is starting to discolour where the pigeons sit and at the bottom where the rain and slush bounces off the pavement. Some of the decorative stuff looks a bit manky and has some of the common-on-fences round here green layer growing on it.
She wants to retain the light colour, so I assume we want "golden brown" or something. I poked around on the 'net and it looks like I should apply some oil-based treatment.
Went to Wickes, tore a corner off a brochure, dipped it in the "light brown" creosub and painted an inch or two of their white shelf. Thought Hmmm, can use it anyway and bought it. Back home tried a bit on the hidden back fence and it is almost black, so I think this is a non-starter.
So, what should I try to get? I do agree with her that the tanilised finish, which will gradually fade to grey, is not what we want. Neighbour's dark creosub fence looks great.
The Wickes colour chart and their web site says nothing about whether products are oil or water based. The best stuff I ever used was real creosote years ago. You could really smell it killing everything within yards.
Why do I always end up writing a small novel?