staining white cedar

[mike (Guest)]

I will be adding a gate to a older pressure treated deck. The deck wood is now a grayish color - most of the green is gone.
This person wants the gate to be made of white cedar due to the arsenic in pressure treated and kids. Do you know any stains that are available or any way to age the white cedar to match the
cedar to the deck?
Mike

[Marilyn (Guest)]

I think that trying to "age" two dissimilar woods to look the same color is not going to work well. I would take a scrap piece of your white cedar and take it to your local specialty paint store (Sherwin Williams around here) along with a piece of the original deck and have them work out a stain to match. That way you only have to buy one color. Most of them can do this with 24 hours lead time.

[woodchuck1954]

You may have to experiment to match the color,but one idea is to get a semi-transparent Olympic stain. The oil in Olympic can be thinned with Boiled linseed oil. That would make it more transparent. You may want to experiment with color tints to match your deck boards. If you can't match,consider refinishing the whole thing. A deck should be refinished every couple of years,anyway.