New Porch? No, a new old porch

Life By Chocolate and the Greenville Arms porch got a face lift. We have struggled, over the years, with a cracking porch floor. As soon as the porch was painted, it would start cracking. This year, we decided to strip the porch completely and then paint it.



However, during the stripping and sanding process, we saw that the wood under the porch was magnificent and beautiful. We still have not positively identified the wood but we have some guesses and they include, mahogany, yellow pine, maple, white spruce, white fir and fir.

Here's a close up of the wood, take a guess yourself. Both of these shots are after sanding, the light is a little darker on the second picture.





Mahogany is a typical deck wood and so I'm going to stick with mahogany because this deck is in great shape and the pine stairs had to be replaced. If anyone has a guess, or better, actually knows what wood this is, please comment.



After stripping the porch flooring, we realized that we had a treasure on our hands and decided not to paint.



The polyester deck paint that we had was just horrible. Battleship gray is not my favorite color. So, we decided to stain the porch using a Sweet Rose Red stain, semi-transparent to show the grain, age and various imperfections in the wood; good choice that. I think our painters were relieved that we chose to stain it. After all their labors, we could not cover up this beautiful wood.



Now, we have a new porch. The whole porch and surrounds have been painted and the stairs have been fixed. It feels like a new inn; simply beautiful.