Finishing WRC in a Californian Bungalow

Hi all,

I am the lucky owner of a Brick Californian Bungalow which I started restoring/renovating a couple years ago. I'm one of those people that believe in keeping the whole project in line with the character of the original dwelling and have sourced materials from salvage yards to match wherever possible. The windows, architraves, skirting, doors and entrance panelling are all made of Western Red Cedar, which was originally covered in a black gunk (kero and tar mixture ?), followed in later years with several layers of an oil based paint. Why someone would choose to hide such timber I will never know, but after a full year of weekends heat-gunning, scraping, sanding and filling, I now have the interior timber bare, baby's bottom silky smooth and ready for finishing.

After so much time and effort, I'm seeking some advice on what finish I should use that would show the natural beauty and colour of the cedar. Really if I wanted to keep close to original I should use something like black japan, but it is so dark, I might as well have just painted it all in back paint ! I've asked the so called experts at paint shops who have all just tried to flog off their favourite product, but after reading numerous posts in this forum, realise that there is more to finishing than just whacking on some gloss estapol.

I realise that cedar is very soft, and a hard covering may be a sensible choice, but I'm not too fussed about the timber getting more bumps and scratches, after all it is a 70 year old house and it requires a degree of character that only years living in can produce. The last thing I want to have to do is strip the timber again, after I have made a mistake with the finish. I don't know if my hands can regrow anymore fingerprints !

Hoping someone more knowledgeable than me (and that's not too hard) can help. Any advice is very much appreciated.

Mick

What you are calling WRC is a different species, "it is Red Pine" and no longer available commercially. But it is visually so similar to wrc that you could mix red pine & wrc. I've made furniture from recycled red pine.

Any of the clear finishes will work well on it, but there is nothing you can do to harden the wood itself.

If it was my house I would use Cabot's Clear Floor finish on it, it's water based and non yellowing and very hard to scratch or mark. I'd use the satin finish as gloss tends to shpow dust very easily

Thanks for the reply Bob, I think I've got some of the Cabots you are referring to (albeit the gloss) and will try it on a sample piece. So "red pine", much like cedar is free of knots and comes in the variety of colours from pale brown to deep red too ?