Seriously, who has the best log home stain?

 Ok, I understand, this is a hard fact to accept regarding your log home stain, you want your log home stain to last forever so you don't have to do any maintenance!  Accept the fact that no log home stain lasts forever and you will be able to make a more intelligent decision on which road you want to go down with your log home coating.  You must make decisions on your log home stain not only based on how it looks when freshly applied to your log home or natural wood (which is important) but also on how does this log home stain look after 3 years of weathering in the real world (3 years is the recommended re-coat/maintenance time for most stains on the market).  

We recently came across a few "test yards" out there at various locations around the country and we are on a mission to find these things and then let the consumers know through our web blog.  Here we are highlighting a test board that was done by a company that provides log siding and wood products to the general public.  They decided to do a test board apparently without any stain company being involved.  You never know who is doing these tests, it could be for their own benefit and could cheat if they were inclined to do so, for that reason, we will look at each "stain test yard" we find, identify which area it comes from, and try to be sure it is not from a manufacturer or representative of any manufacturer.  Every yard we find this year we will post the pictures of the results without their PR attached and let our customers' decide their own opinions based on the pictures.

This test yard appears to be in OHIO, keep in mind that each climate will have different results, but this one gives you a good idea of how stains wear over time.  You'll see that the heavily pigmented stains really turned dark over the 3 year period, the water based stains using the base coat/clear coat system peeled badly (these are hard to remove with your average wood cleaner/restoration product and usually have to be corn cob or walnut shell blasted to remove!), and the penetrating stains all look different after 3 years.  

We sell some of these products on our site, the ones we don't, well, you can see why and the ones we do sell are constantly under scrutiny to be sure we are supplying our customers with the best available products.  The shocking results to us was how poorly some of the "big name"manufacturers' products performed, just sad.  We were impressed with the Lovitt's Natural Gold results after 3 years, still looks light with minimal darkening with no peeling or flaking-and looks easy to clean up and re-coat for another 3 years.  As you can see, nothing lasts forever but each log home stain will leave you these results or something close to it in your neck of the woods.  

Visit LogStains.com for the best technical advice, lowest pricing, and same day shipping to get it to your doorstep fast via UPS.   Have a great day!