Finishes

The folks at Powell Paint Center applied some of the available finishes to one of the boards that was broken during the deconstruction process.  From right to left, the finishes are Cetol Log & Siding in three colors: Teak (085), Cedar (077), and Natural (078), and ArborCoat Transparent Deck & Siding in Cedar (637-40).

The Cetol Natural and the ArborCoat Cedar are too light for this application as the discoloration in the reclaimed wood really stands out, especially with the ArborCoat.  I purposely did a mediocre job of sanding down this board so that we could pick a finish that looked good even if every board isn't sanded to perfection.

Cetol Log & Siding Cedar (left) and Teak (right).

Above is a close-up of the two finishes that look good.  We're leaning toward the Teak finish because the darker and browner finish does an even better job of blending all the tones of the reclaimed wood together.  This is an extreme closeup of the Teak finish under artificial light:

It would be nice to see how these finishes look in bright sunlight, but this being Portland, we may or may not get that opportunity before we need to pull the trigger on one of these.