Shake it Off

I stay up too late
Got too much in my brain
That's what people say mmhmmm
That's what people say mmhmmm

Baby I'm just gonna stain my shakes, shakes, shakes... 

We had all of our cedar shakes delivered this week. We wanted to stain/seal them before they were installed and we needed to do that somewhere warm... Our house it is!

The shakes will be going in those two peaks. We decided on are real cedar mounted onto plywood panels. This gives us the look of cedar (we struggled to find a decent faux cedar shake we liked) but makes installation a breeze. Or so we've been told!

We love the colour variation in cedar so we wanted to find a transparent stain that wouldn't cover this up. We also have pine timbers going up on the porches and a sienna colour pressure treated deck. Try finding a stain that coordinates the three of those!

We initially found a stain called Taupe by Cabot. In the brochure it looked great! It was a great match between the brown pressure treated lumber and the cedar shakes. Until we got it home... It's taupe. I'm sure it would be fine for the deck and timbers, but I didn't want to chance ruining the cedar colour on the shakes. 

So back we went looking for a different stain. This time we decided on Red Cedar by Behr. I love it! It's semi-transparent, so the variation shows, and it has a more brown than red tint. 

Here it is going on... I was sold on the first swipe!

This kitchen table has seen more projects! It's the table I grew up with... For the longest time Carla's French homework could be seen etched into it as well as the spot where she set a cloth covered in nail polish remover :)

So a little stain won't hurt it!

Doesn't it look good?! Now we just have 200 or so square feet to stain tomorrow and we're ready to go!