Removing old flakey stain from rough weatherboards

Hi,

I need to give a cottage a repaint as its UV protecting stain is getting old and is flaking off (like skin does after bad sunburn). The weatherboards are rough-cut Cedar (I think) and are about 12 years old so I'm guessing the stain is this age too. Here's a pic:

http://www.renovateforum.com/attachm...1&d=1225419256

The grey area in the above pic is raw, weathered timber where the stain has failed & flaked away. Just to the left & right of that you can (hopefully) see lots more stain failure which will also soon just flake off and expose the timber to the elements hence the reason I want to repain/stain the place ASAP.

Before I can restain it (planning on using the Intergrain 4-step process) I obviously need to get rid of all the flakey bits and clean it all up but what should I use ?

I was originally thinking of a light dry scrub down with a wire brush and then a rinse with a pressure cleaner as I have to treat the exposed timber with an anti-fungus/colour treatment before painting anyway. I have just bought a small low powered Karcher and noticed that I can get an $80 sand blaster attachment. I thought that would probably do a much better job but I'm not sure.

Anyone comment on this or had experience with 'wet sandblasting' of weatherboards like this ? Could it be too much for the timber and end up doing more damage than good ?!

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Attached Thumbnails http://www.renovateforum.com/attachm...1&d=1225419256



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