If you could choose between staining your outdoor wood furniture in a few days or an afternoon, which would you choose? I thought so! Save your knees and valuable time by tossing the paintbrush and trying these tips for how to stain Adirondack furniture the easy way!

Easy Way To Stain Adirondack Furniture

The last time I stained our Adirondack furniture it meant aching knees and two long days to get the job done. A chore I had no intention of repeating this time around.

So when our Adirondack furniture needed another refresh, I got smart and pulled out the big guns. In the span of an afternoon, I got two Adirondack chairs and a tete-a-tete finished with two coats of stain.

The most time-consuming part of this makeover was waiting for the stain to dry. I even had time to give our Adirondack fire bowl table a new stain color before the dinner bell rang.

So how can you paint the wood patio furniture the quick and easy way? With a pneumatic HVLP (high volume low pressure) spray gun and air compressor.

My preference would have been using our gravity feed spray gun that came with our compressor but I couldn't get the cap off because of my injured hand (you can read about that saga in my How To Stain An Outdoor Area Rug post.

Ours is an older Husky model, the new ones have a handy screw top on the canister. With the gravity-feed model, you can adjust the paint flow, width pattern, and flow direction. But the siphon model got the job done nonetheless.

What You'll Need To Spray Stain

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Supply List

Garden Hose or Power Washer
1-gallon Sea Foam Green (SC-132) Behr Premium Exterior Wood Solid Stain
1-gallon Najavo White (SC-157) Behr Premium Exterior Wood Solid Stain
Painting Tarp
20-Gallon Air Compressor
Pneumatic HVLP Gravity Feed Spray Gun

Here's How We Did It

Lucky for me my Adirondack furniture had been stained only a couple of years ago and was in good shape. The only reason I re-stained them is to change the color.

Prep Outdoor Furniture For Stain

Clean the furniture first with either your garden hose or a power washer. Remove any flaking or peeling stain with a paint scraper. If that doesn't do the trick you may need to use a paint remover.

Tips For Staining With Paint Sprayer

1. In order to get the right velocity, the stain may have to be thinned to approximately 1 cup of water to 1 gallon of stain. Note: if your stain isn't water-based you'll need the appropriate thinner.
2. Check the spray first on a piece of cardboard or scrap wood.
3. To avoid paint build-up, start the spray before contact with the furniture and move your arm (not your wrist) across the surface and release the trigger after passing the furniture.
4. Hold the sprayer about six inches from the surface.
5. Apply a few thin even coats rather than one thick coat of stain (ours took two).
6. Wipe the tip of the sprayer regularly to avoid any build-up.
7. Clean the sprayer thoroughly when you're done following the manufacturer's instructions.
8. Don't store the paint in the canister.

How To Stain With Paint Sprayer

Start by staining the chairs upside down so any drips towards the front can be fixed before that side is stained. The recommended dry time between coats is 6-8 hours but I didn't inherit the patience gene and confess to not waiting that long.

Right or wrong, I cut the time in half because the stain dries much quicker when sprayed in thin coats. It also helped that it was a warm sunny day outside.

The total cure time for the solid stain we used is 72 hours.

The photo below is after the first coat of Behr Premium Navajo White Exterior Wood Solid Stain on both our Adirondack chairs and tete-a-tete. It took all of five minutes to stain both pieces - happy dance time!

To get a good idea of what color they used to be, the photo below is our DIY Adirondack Fire Bowl Table stained sage green.

The photo below is after the second coat of Sea Foam Behr Premium Exterior Wood Solid Stain.

Here they are all refreshed and back on the deck. Don't mind the pathetic-looking flowers in the vintage camper flower pot. Our budget-friendly deck restore wasn't finished until late June so they haven't had a chance to get established.

I've since added a pop of red on the Adirondack furniture with inexpensive chair cushions that I stenciled with a birdhouse motif. They look so pretty against the Navajo white stain color!

Thanks for stopping by the Interior Frugalista today! I hope you were inspired by these staining tips for painting wooden outdoor furniture.

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