Park bench.
Slats are 2x6's and rotten after 40 years.
Just bought cedar to replace them.
The choices I see:
- Just leave it raw/natural and let it weather
- Stain it with the darkest stain I can find and then slap on a couple coats of spar varnish and figure on re-applying at some interval (yearly?)
- Paint it white (as the rotten ones were) and figure on re-painting it every year
#'s 2 and 3 seem like high maintenance to me.
Is there any conventional wisdom here?