Photos of your weathered wood furniture

[Brian Kent]

I am deciding on a wood for an outdoor dining table. I know the best woods in this area are white oak, redwood, or western red cedar. Mahogany is more expensive, cypress pretty rare in Southern California, Teak is out of my price range, and Ipe pretty hard on the tools.

I invite you to post pictures of our wooden outdoor furniture to show how it weathers (with or without annual TLC) to help me choose.

Thanks everybody.

Brian

[Ray DuBose]

I'll have to get a picture of it but I built a Table for my 2 Big Green Eggs out of IPE. I put Pinnifon on it the first year and haven't touched it the last couple of years. need to sand it some and reapply pinnofon again (because it being a cooking surface I've had cooking oil and everything else out there soak into it). Cutting it wasn't hard on the little Delta Contractor Saw I had at the time nor the router I used, the only pain in the rear part is having to predrill all the holes because screws would snap off if you tried to drill directly into it. Depending on what your making I wouldn't completely count it out because it's hard. It's also a very heavy wood so if your looking at making a chair or something your going to move around a lot I may go for something a little lighter but your not going to find anything that last as long outdoors. Also it's one of the more fire resistant woods out there. The Owner of the local lumber supplier had a Ipe Deck off the back of his house.. the House burnt down the deck was in great shape. They built a new house right up against the surviving deck.

[Brian Kent]

I had to look to what Big Green Eggs are. Very nice.
I am only building the table, as we have some nice steel and webbing chairs. It would be nice to make something of truly enduring value.

[Chris Tsutsui]

I'll try to remember to take and post pictures when I go home.

I made a dining set out of redwood that's a couple years old and used maybe twice. It sits under partial shade in Laguna Hills which isn't too far north of where you are.

I also made a bench out of a trex type of plastic material and WOW, this stuff looks the same as it did years ago. I think it's a PVC type of plastic material. The legs on this bench are of redwood 4x4s and although I've coated it generously with an outdoor polyurethane and even applied a second treatment after a year... The color fades and turns a more grayish color. I think this wood aged much quicker because my sprinklers get it wet, in addition to it being exposed to a lot of sunlight.

If you want something long term, then plastic composites will be the clear winner... Anything else I recommend you do more homework than I did in terms of finishing / protecting a decent outdoor wood..

[Brian Kent]

Thank you Chris.

I just got an encouraging word from Reel Lumber (Anaheim and Riverside, CA). They are selling white oak for $2.93/b.f. So I'll be looking to see the aging on white oak too.

[Paul Saffold]

197085White oak, 2 years old, no treatment. Winter indoors (she likes it enough to use all year).