Water Stains on Wood Logs: How to Remove

Removing water stains from the wood logs in your log cabin is entirely possible. Learn two methods for removing water stains from wood, including pine.

LESLIE: Greg in West Virginia wants to give us a call about log cabins. What can we do for you?

GREG: Yes. I was wanting to find out how to get a water stain off of my logs. It’s raw pine …

TOM: OK.

GREG: … and it came in on the inside, on a big storm. (chuckles)

TOM: Hmm. OK.

GREG: I was just wondering – I haven’t – they’re not finished so I just – I was thinking I’d heard something about mayonnaise …

TOM: Mayonnaise?!

GREG: … for the stain. I don’t know if it …

TOM: You want your whole house to smell like a tuna sandwich? (chuckles)

GREG: Depends on what time of the day it is. (Leslie and Greg chuckle)

TOM: Well, you know, I don’t think that’s probably the best solution. If you have a water stain on the logs, you’re probably going to …

GREG: Right.

TOM: … want to use a good cleaner. Now, the thing is though, when you use these cleaners, you may find that they lighten parts of the logs so I would try this cautiously. But there’s a product out called JOMAX – J-O-M-A-X – which is really a mildicide and it will definitely take off water stains. It will lighten everything up; it’ll probably bring it into the same color but I would suggest that you approach this cautiously because we don’t want to have, you know, one super-clean log and everything else is …

LESLIE: Mm-hmm.

TOM: … sort of naturally aged. What you’ll find though, with the wood, is even if it does brighten up, some of that yellowing from the sun will come back but it’s going to take, you know, a couple of months to a year or so.

GREG: OK.

LESLIE: Now, I know along the lines of mayonnaise, something that I’ve always done when I get a water stain on a piece of furniture is toothpaste. I take a little bit of gel toothpaste and I sort of rub it on with a nice clean, soft rag and that does an amazing job of getting like a water ring out of a tabletop. Maybe that could be the water ring to the extreme on your log.

GREG: (chuckling) Yeah. (Leslie chuckles) I’d take (inaudible at 0:16:30.9) but that’ll be alright. (Leslie laughs)

LESLIE: Minty is better than sandwich-scented, I think.

TOM: Give it a shot. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.