- 1 day ago
Go push your thumb against one of your fence posts down near the ground. If it gives — if the wood feels soft or spongy — that post is dying from the inside, and the paint you put on it is the reason.
Now look at the barn behind my house. The siding is older than my grandfather. It has never been painted, not once, and the wood is still solid after a hundred and forty winters. We have never bought a can of paint to protect a barn, a fence, a shed, or a coop in the whole history of this farm. We use something that costs about twenty dollars to mix a whole bucket of, and instead of sitting on top of the wood like paint, it soaks in and becomes part of it.
In this video I give you the exact recipe my family has used for as long as anyone can remember — including the one extra ingredient most folks have never heard of — and I show you how to put it on wood you already own, even wood that is already painted and starting to rot. I explain why paint actually rots your fence from the inside, why this coating turns to stone in the grain and gets harder every time it rains, and the honest truth about how often you really need to touch it up.
I will also tell you the part that should make you
Now look at the barn behind my house. The siding is older than my grandfather. It has never been painted, not once, and the wood is still solid after a hundred and forty winters. We have never bought a can of paint to protect a barn, a fence, a shed, or a coop in the whole history of this farm. We use something that costs about twenty dollars to mix a whole bucket of, and instead of sitting on top of the wood like paint, it soaks in and becomes part of it.
In this video I give you the exact recipe my family has used for as long as anyone can remember — including the one extra ingredient most folks have never heard of — and I show you how to put it on wood you already own, even wood that is already painted and starting to rot. I explain why paint actually rots your fence from the inside, why this coating turns to stone in the grain and gets harder every time it rains, and the honest truth about how often you really need to touch it up.
I will also tell you the part that should make you
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00:00Go out to your fence right now and push your thumb against one of the posts down near the ground.
00:05Go on.
00:06If it gives a little, if the wood feels soft or spongy, or you can dig a fingernail into it,
00:13then I want you to understand something.
00:15That post is dying from the inside, and the paint you put on it is the reason.
00:21You painted that post maybe eight years ago, maybe ten.
00:25You bought the good can, the one that promised fifteen years.
00:30And here you are, the wood gone soft and black at the bottom, the paint peeling off in sheets,
00:37and you are about to spend another two hundred dollars and a whole weekend doing it all over again.
00:44Now let me tell you about the barn behind my house.
00:48The siding on that barn is older than my grandfather.
00:51It has never been painted, not once, not ever.
00:56It has stood through a hundred and forty winters and a hundred and forty summers,
01:01through ice storms and floods and heat that curls shingles, and the wood is still sound.
01:08You can wrap your knuckles on it and hear that tight, dry, solid sound,
01:13the sound of wood that is still strong all the way through.
01:18My name is Elias Yoda.
01:21I am Amish.
01:22I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and we have never bought a can of paint
01:28to protect a barn, a fence, a shed, or a chicken coop in the whole history of this farm.
01:35We use something that costs about twenty dollars to mix up a whole bucket of,
01:40and it does not sit on top of the wood the way paint does.
01:44It goes into the wood and becomes part of it, and it protects the wood instead of smothering it.
01:51I am going to give you the exact recipe today, the one my family has used for as long as
01:57anyone
01:58can remember, including the one extra ingredient most folks have never heard of.
02:03I am going to show you how to put it on wood you already own,
02:07even wood that is already painted and already starting to rot.
02:12And I am going to tell you the part that should make you a little angry,
02:16which is that this was common knowledge in every farmhouse in America a hundred years ago,
02:22and the only reason you have never heard of it is that there is no money in it for anybody.
02:28Stay with me.
02:30Let me start by telling you why your paint failed,
02:33because once you understand this, you will never look at a paint can the same way again.
02:39Wood is not dead.
02:42I know it looks dead.
02:44It has been cut from the tree, milled, dried.
02:47But wood never stops moving.
02:50It breathes.
02:52On a humid day, it takes moisture in from the air and swells just a little.
02:57On a dry day, it gives that moisture back and shrinks just a little.
03:03Every single day, in and out, your fence and your deck and your barn siding are breathing,
03:11swelling and shrinking with the weather.
03:13That is just the nature of wood, and there is no stopping it.
03:18Now, here is what paint does.
03:21Paint is a skin of plastic.
03:24When you brush it on, it seals the surface.
03:27That is the whole idea.
03:28That is what they sell you.
03:30And on the day you put it on, it works.
03:33The wood is sealed.
03:35The water cannot get in.
03:37But the wood is still breathing under there.
03:40It is still swelling and shrinking every day under that skin of plastic.
03:46And sooner or later, a year, two years, that movement cracks the paint.
03:52Just a hairline.
03:54Just a little split you would never notice.
03:57Often down low near the ground, or on a corner, or around a nail head.
04:03And now you have the worst possible situation.
04:07Water gets in through that crack.
04:09But it cannot get back out, because the rest of the wood is still sealed tight under good paint.
04:16So the water sits there, soaked into the wood, trapped behind the very paint that was supposed to protect it.
04:24And trapped water is what rot eats.
04:28Trapped water is what the fungus needs.
04:31So your post rots from the inside out, behind paint that still looks fine on the surface.
04:39That is why your fence fails at the ground line.
04:43That is why your deck rots underneath where you cannot see it.
04:47The paint did not fail you by wearing off.
04:51The paint failed you by working too well.
04:54It sealed the wood up so tight that the wood drowned.
04:58The old people understood this.
05:00They never tried to seal wood.
05:02They knew you cannot win that fight.
05:05Instead, they did the opposite.
05:07They used something that lets the wood breathe freely,
05:11while making the wood itself poisonous to the things that rot it.
05:15And that something is lime.
05:17The powder is called hydrated lime.
05:20You may also see it called slaked lime, or builder's lime, or mason's lime.
05:26It is calcium hydroxide.
05:28You can buy a 50-pound bag of it at any farm supply store or hardware store for under $20,
05:36and that bag is enough to do far more than one weekend project.
05:40It works out to pennies a pound.
05:43Now, I have to stop right here and tell you the truth about safety, because I take this
05:48seriously, and you should too.
05:50Lime is caustic.
05:52It is a strong alkaline, high on the scale, like a strong soap or worse.
05:58Wet lime will burn your skin if you leave it on, and it will hurt your eyes badly if it
06:04gets in them.
06:05So when you mix it and when you brush it, you wear gloves, you wear eye protection, and you
06:11keep it away from the children until it is dry and cured.
06:15This is not something to be careless with.
06:17Treated with a little respect, it is one of the safest and oldest building materials on
06:23earth.
06:24It has been used for thousands of years.
06:27But you wear your gloves.
06:29Read the bag.
06:31With that said, the lime is only half of it.
06:34The lime alone will not stick to bare wood, and this is the thing most folks get wrong when
06:40they try whitewash, and it flakes right off.
06:43Plain lime wash is made for stone and brick and plaster, not wood.
06:49Wood is too acidic, and it swells too much, and the lime just sheds off it.
06:55The trick, the thing that makes it grip wood and turns it from a chalky coating into something
07:01tough and water-shedding, is milk.
07:05Skim milk, specifically.
07:07When you mix lime with skim milk, something happens.
07:11The lime reacts with the protein in the milk, the casein, and forms a new substance the chemists
07:18call calcium caseinate.
07:21It is a natural glue, a strong one.
07:24It is the same family of glue they used to hold furniture and even airplane parts together
07:30a hundred years ago.
07:31That milk and lime glue is what carries the lime down into the wood grain and binds it
07:38there so it does not flake off.
07:40And as it cures, it becomes water-resistant while still letting the wood breathe.
07:46So already you can see this is not paint.
07:49Paint sits on top and seals.
07:52This soaks in, glues itself into the grain, lets the wood keep breathing, and makes the
07:59wood hostile to rot and insects, because fungus and bugs do not like that high alkaline lime
08:06one bit.
08:08It does the exact opposite of what paint does, and that is exactly why it lasts.
08:14Here is the recipe.
08:16Write it down, or just watch it again.
08:18It is simple.
08:20Into a five-gallon bucket, you start with about four quarts of skim milk.
08:24It has to be skim, not whole, not 2%.
08:29The fat in whole milk will turn rancid, and your coating will stink and fail.
08:35Skim milk because you want the protein, not the fat.
08:39Then you add about one pound of hydrated lime, slowly, a little at a time, stirring the whole
08:46while with a wooden stick or a wooden paddle.
08:49Never a metal one.
08:51Lime reacts with some metals, and it will weaken your mix and foul your tools.
08:57Wood or plastic only.
09:00Stir it slow and steady until it is smooth, about the look of thin cream or skim milk itself.
09:07Then about a quarter cup of plain table salt.
09:10The salt does two things.
09:13It helps the coating cure up harder, and it adds a little more bite against mold and mildew,
09:19which matters because while this stuff is wet, before it cures, mold can try to grow in it.
09:25The salt helps hold that off.
09:28Then one tablespoon of raw linseed oil.
09:32Linseed comes from the flax plant.
09:34It is an old, natural oil.
09:37This is the part that gives the coating its water-shedding strength.
09:41Just a tablespoon, stirred in well.
09:44Too much, and it will not cure right.
09:47A tablespoon is plenty.
09:49And now the ingredient most folks have never heard of.
09:52The one my family has always added.
09:55The one that takes this from a good coating to a coating that lasts for decades.
10:01Alum.
10:02Potassium alum.
10:03It is a white crystal powder you can buy in the pickling section of the grocery store or at any
10:09pharmacy.
10:10Folks have used it for pickling and canning for 200 years.
10:14Costs a dollar or two.
10:16You take about two tablespoons of powdered alum,
10:19dissolve it in a cup of hot water until it is clear,
10:23and you stir that into your bucket last, right before you brush it on.
10:28Here is what the alum does.
10:30It is what they call a mordant, a binder, a fixative.
10:34It is the same thing the old dyers used to lock color into cloth so it would not wash out.
10:41In your bucket, the alum grabs hold of the lime and the milk protein and binds them tighter together
10:48and drives the whole mix deeper into the wood.
10:52It is the difference between a coating that holds up for a handful of years and one that holds up
10:58for decades.
11:00My grandfather never called it a mordant.
11:02He would not have known the word.
11:04He just knew that the batch with the alum in it was the batch that lasted.
11:09And so that is the batch we have always made.
11:12That is the whole recipe.
11:15Four quarts skim milk, a pound of hydrated lime, a quarter cup of salt, a tablespoon of linseed oil,
11:25two tablespoons of alum dissolved in hot water and added last.
11:30Mix it in a bucket of wood or plastic, never metal.
11:34The whole batch costs you under $25 and covers a good-sized fence.
11:41Now, let me tell you how to put it on, because the preparation matters as much as the recipe.
11:47And the good news for you is that you do not have to start with new wood.
11:52This works on the fence you already have, the deck you already built,
11:57even wood that is already painted and already starting to go soft.
12:02Pick a stretch of dry weather, three dry days in a row if you can get them,
12:07because this needs to dry and begin curing without rain on it.
12:13First, take a stiff wire brush and go over the whole surface.
12:17You are not trying to strip it down to bare wood like you would for paint.
12:22You are doing the opposite.
12:24You are roughing it up, opening the pores so the coating can soak in.
12:29If there is loose, flaking old paint, knock it off with the brush.
12:34Wherever the wood is still slick with good paint, scuff it up so it is no longer slick,
12:40because this coating needs a porous, open surface to grip.
12:44It will not soak into a smooth, painted skin.
12:48If you find soft, punky, rotted spots,
12:51dig that bad wood out with a screwdriver or an old chisel
12:55until you reach wood that is still firm.
12:58Do not leave the rot in there and coat over it.
13:02That will just keep rotting underneath.
13:05Dig it back to good wood.
13:07Do not fuss over how it looks.
13:10You are about to coat the whole thing anyway.
13:13Then you brush the mix on.
13:16Use a natural bristle brush.
13:18The old folks used horsehair, but any wide natural brush will do.
13:23Do not spray it.
13:25Brush it, and brush it on thin.
13:28It will look thin and milky, almost see-through, going on.
13:33That is right.
13:34That is what it is supposed to look like.
13:37Do not glob it on thick, trying to get coverage in one pass.
13:42Thin coats soak in and cure right.
13:45Thick ones crack.
13:46Let it dry a full day, 24 hours.
13:51Then put on a second thin coat the same way.
13:55Two thin coats is the standard.
13:57On wood that is very rough or very weathered, you might want a third.
14:02Let that cure.
14:04That is the work.
14:05A weekend, a bucket, a brush, and under $25 in materials.
14:12Now you are going to see something in the first rain that might worry you, so let me tell you
14:17about it ahead of time so you do not think it failed.
14:20For the first few days, water will bead right up on the surface and run off, the way it does
14:27on a fresh, waxed table.
14:29Then, after a week or two, the water will seem to soak in a little instead of beading.
14:35Do not panic.
14:36That is not failure.
14:38That is the coating doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
14:42What is happening is this.
14:44The lime in your coating is slowly turning back into stone.
14:47I mean that plainly.
14:50Hydrated lime, left open to the air, pulls in a gas from the air over time and turns back
14:56into calcium carbonate, which is limestone, the same stuff the lime was burned from in
15:01the first place.
15:02It is becoming rock again, right there in the grain of your wood.
15:06And it does this slowly, over weeks, and it gets harder every time it gets damp and dries
15:12again.
15:13Rain does not wear this coating away the way it wears away paint.
15:18Rain helps it cure.
15:19It is turning to stone inside your wood.
15:23After about a month, take a knife and try to scrape it.
15:27You will find you cannot lift it off the way you can chip paint.
15:30It is not sitting on top of the wood.
15:33It has become part of the wood.
15:35You have not painted your fence.
15:37You have turned the surface of your fence into something closer to stone, breathable stone,
15:43that sheds water and starves out rot.
15:47Now, I am going to be honest with you because that is the only way I know how to do
15:52this
15:52and the only way this channel stays worth your trust.
15:55This is not a coating you put on once and never think about again for the rest of your
16:00life.
16:01On a barn wall under a good roof overhang, out of the worst weather, it can last for decades.
16:07There are buildings in our country wearing limewash that was last touched before any of us were
16:13born.
16:14But on a fence post, sitting out in full sun and full rain, on a deck you walk on every
16:20day, you will want to freshen it up, brush on another coat or two, every several years.
16:27Here is the thing, though.
16:28That touch-up costs you a few dollars and an afternoon because the wood underneath is still
16:34sound, yet never rotted.
16:36Compare that to paint, where every few years you are scraping, sanding, priming, and re-coating
16:43a fence that is quietly rotting underneath the whole time and eventually replacing the
16:49posts altogether.
16:50A coat of this every so often, for pennies, on wood that never rots, against a lifetime
16:56of paint and replacement.
16:58That is the trade.
17:00That is why the old barns are still standing.
17:03I want to take a moment here because this is the part that matters.
17:07Think about who profits from your paint.
17:10The paint companies profit, of course, but it is bigger and quieter than that.
17:15A product that protects your fence for decades is a product you buy once.
17:20A product that fails on a schedule, that peels and cracks every five to eight years like clockwork,
17:27is a product you buy again and again and again for the rest of your life.
17:32Think about it.
17:33The 15-year paint that fails in eight is not a defective product.
17:38From their side of the counter, it is a perfect product.
17:42It works just long enough that you trust the brand and fails just soon enough that you
17:47are back at the register.
17:49Over a lifetime, the average homeowner spends thousands of dollars painting and repainting
17:55the same fences, sheds, and decks, and at the end of all that money, the wood is often
18:01rotted out anyway and needs replacing.
18:04Thousands of dollars to protect wood that a $20 bag of lime and a gallon of skim milk would
18:10have protected better.
18:12And here is the part that is almost worse than a conspiracy, because at least a conspiracy
18:17you could fight.
18:18There is no villain in a room somewhere who banned lime wash.
18:23It is quieter than that.
18:25There is simply no money in lime.
18:28No company can build an advertising budget around a 50-cent bag of powder you mix with milk in
18:34your own bucket.
18:35No home improvement show gets sponsored by skim milk.
18:39So the knowledge was not destroyed, it was just outspent, drowned out by a hundred years
18:46of advertisements for things in cans, pushed to the bottom shelf in the garden section,
18:52unlabeled for this purpose, while the expensive cans got the big display up front at eye level.
18:58The hardware store still sells the lime.
19:01They just have no reason on earth to tell you what it can really do.
19:05We never forgot, because we never had a paint budget and never wanted one.
19:11We mixed our barn milk, we brushed it on, and we built barns that are still standing
19:16straight after 140 years.
19:20The men who built those barns were not smarter than you.
19:23They had simply never been talked into believing that the answer had to come in a can.
19:29So here is what I want you to do this weekend.
19:33Go to the farm store and buy a bag of hydrated lime.
19:37The small bag, you do not need 50 pounds for a first project, but it is so cheap you may
19:43as well.
19:44Stop at the grocery for a gallon of skim milk, a box of pickling salt, and a small container
19:51of alum from the canning aisle.
19:53Grab a bottle of raw linseed oil.
19:57You will spend under $30 and have plenty left over.
20:01Pick the worst thing you own.
20:03The fence post going soft at the ground.
20:06The shed wall that faces north and never dries.
20:10The deck rail that is graying and splitting.
20:14Wire brush it.
20:15Dig out any rot.
20:17And brush on two thin coats of barn milk a day apart.
20:21Wear your gloves.
20:23Then watch it through the next year and see for yourself.
20:27Tell me in the comments below, what are you going to coat first?
20:32The fence?
20:33The shed?
20:34The deck?
20:35The chicken coop?
20:36And tell me how old it is and how many times you have already painted it.
20:42I read every one of these, and the things you all tell me about your own places are the
20:48reason I keep doing this.
20:50Next time, I am going to show you how my grandfather kept the dirt floor of our root cellar bone
20:57dry
20:57through the wettest springs, and the whole foundation of this house dry along with it,
21:04with no sump pump, no dehumidifier, and not one drop of electricity, using a trench, a bed
21:12of stone, and the slope of the ground, the same way it was done in the old country.
21:18You will not believe it is that simple, but it is, and it has kept this cellar dry for a
21:24hundred years.
21:26Until then.
21:27Mix your barn milk, brush it on, and remember, the people who built this country with their hands
21:34new things we are only just starting to remember.
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