We just had our cedar fence stained for the first time this spring. We had a "professional" do the job. The fence never reached the color on the color chart and the painter complained my fence soaked up too much of the Sherwin Williams Woodscape polyurethane acrylic semi-transparent stain that she couldn't achieve the REDWOOD sample on the color chart without us buying more stain.

Here is my question,the old varnish stain would basically just lay on the suface of the wood, it seems to me that the Polyurethane stain does pretty much the same thing, is that correct? There was a large splinter, 6 inches, on one of the rails of my fence that I pulled off, I broke it in two pieces and looked at the break, there was very little penetration of the stain into the wood that I could see. The painter's complaint seemed unfounded. I think she didn't know how to give an estimate and didn't want to purchase more stain at her expense. She refuses to complete the job.