western red cedar weather boards

The exterior of our house has WRC weather-boards, which need to be re-finished. We have owned the house for 3 years, and do not know what it has previously been treated with.Several painters have come to give quotes, and have all given conflicting advice. The boards are not painted, and appear to have some sort of stain. The areas exposed to the sun are cracking, and the wood appears dry/ grey, some areas with black ? mould. The current finish is flaking off, and almost gone from the exposed walls. The protected areas still look good, and are dark brown. I don't really mind whether we have to paint, or use some sort of stain or oil. The priority is just to protect the wood and prevent further degradation. Because the wood is very textured, with lots of knots, I don't know whether painting would look very good anyway. The house is exposed to alot of sun. If we were to continue with the current "natural" look, do we need to know what is now on the wood? How would we find out? ( prevous owners unable to help). Can the boards be sanded, or is just using a brush better? Any advice would be very appreciated, because we really don't know how to proceed.

sounds like it mighta been painted with aquatrol

I have had terrific results on WRC weather boards using Cabots Stains, strangely enough, the colour was Dark Cedar. I don't know if they still make it, but we got nearly ten years out of the last lot.

Try to stay away from the "paint" types, but you may have to get a bit of advice from a Cabots rep regarding preparation.

The dark stain gives a great "chocolaty" sort of colour, and is pretty good at keeping the UV out, although you will have to give the southern walls a bit of a clean every now and then (five years in our case :o ).

We sold our house prior to that after eight years, also WRC weatherboards, same treatment, no recoating, so I've had plenty of experience with it, all good!

Cheers,

P

well id start again .either way you need to decide on the finish and then the system.ie on tin or product work flow sheets.
then get back to a sound base wich means heat gun and scraper 80# paper by machine and sand to an even surface[ hard with cedar cause hard and soft grain dont worry about the uneven ripples is just how cedar is.] realy this is the only way to get something that will last for 10 years or so .
but you have to keep the paint on the wood wich means paint before you get mould & flaking cause the stains go deep into wr cedar if you want to find out how it will look with an oil finish after sanding wipe some turps on it and in my experince quality paint elbow grease and folowing the manufacurers instructions and you will end up with a great job do a wall at a time and have fun and good luck
graham