We are inching closer to our two year anniversary of living in our house and are slowly crossing things off our list to make this house a home. This included staining cedar columns on our front porch. When we first moved in, they weren’t yet faded from the harsh winter, our house was barely a year old when we purchased it. The cedar posts were not stained yet and the builders left this last item up to us. I couldn’t make a split second decision, nor was it top on our priority list.
This summer, after putting in our landscaping and irrigation system, the posts just screamed to be stained. They looked weathered and pathetic. Slowly, other neighbors who were in the same boat, began painting or staining their posts. However; I couldn’t just paint mine any random color, we have black shutters, a black front door, and a tan trim color. Not a lot of color to work with.
After much Pinterest research and Facebook polling with mock-ups shown and I settled on Behr’s Semi-Transparent Stain in Chocolate.
I was THISCLOSE to going with black, but I wanted to incorporate the brown hues in the rock siding that flank our garage. It doesn’t help that it made me feel a little like Joanne from Fixer Upper – this image from one of their houses was my inspiration (though, it makes me wonder if I had gone transparent would it look even more similar?).
I spent a Sunday afternoon cleaning the posts and sanding them down. Over two lunch breaks in two days, I was able to stain the cedar posts – one of the fastest and most satisfying DIYs I’ve completed. The one thing I loved about using this stain is that I didn’t have to wipe off any excess, just brush it on and you’re done! It’s not perfect, and there are spots I should have sanded a bit more throughly before staining, but overall I’m happy with the end result!
The Inspiration (from Fixer Upper):
Semi-Transparent & Transparent Chocolate in action:
(source)
(source)
Here is the mock up using the stain color above in photoshop:
Here is the before/after for your viewing delight:
Before:
During (one coat):
After (two coats): 
What a difference stain makes – I’d love to add some handles to the garage doors to help balance out the black shutters. Also – it never bothered me until my best friend pointed out the the windows above the garage are shutter-less. I had never really noticed before and now I can’t un-notice it :)
How are your cedar post holding up with the Behr stain? Are you please with it?
They are holding up great! I haven’t had to retouch it at all!
can you tell me white size columns these are
Hi,
Your porch posts look awesome! Did you stain the rough or the smooth side of the cedar? (I’m trying to decide which side to have facing out.)
I’m pretty sure it’s the rough side (it was already installed when we bought the house, it was just unfinished wood). I sanded it down a touch prior to staining it though!
How many coats did you use on your posts to achieve that color?
Two coats I think! It’s been a few years and we finally need to touch it up in some places after some harsher storms this past summer!
These look amazing. Did you also put any sealant on the posts or is just the stain keeping them in good shape?
I don’t recall putting on a sealant; I did this a few years ago and they are *just* now starting to show wear. We had a really bad storm this summer come through Iowa and that did the most damage to it, but I plan to sand down those areas and touch it up! Overall, it’s held up fantastic! Hoping to finally do our deck this summer.
Please clarify, did you use the semitransparent oil-based version, or the water based waterproofing version? We like this and are considering it for our new columns, but I am leaning more oil based.
I wish I could confirm, but I’m not positive what I used a few years ago. I do have to redo them after we had some storms come through over the past few years and I need to sand it down and re-stain them. I’ll update the post once I tackle that project with what we used!
I am about to tackle this job. I have 8 to do. My post were very raw and splintery when they were installed and I didn’t mind because it added character, but now that they need to be stained, due to lots of weathering, I’m wondering what grit you used to sand them? Did you completely smooth them out? Thanks in advance!
Hi! Just seeing your note; when I first did them, I sanded them down a little bit to get any big splinters off but not to remove the raw look completely. Upon re-staining them just last week (for the first time in a few years since I first did the staining), my husband sanded down the two front panels of the posts completely to be smooth. I believe he used maybe 80 grit? I’ll have to confirm, he did this more so to remove the old stain so we could re-stain them since they were damaged due to weather, otherwise I would have wanted to keep the the texture but it just wasn’t feasible. We really only had a ton of weathering on the front two panels facing the sun due to weather, but the other three are slightly more grittier/texture showing still but he tried to match the smoothness as best he could to the front two.
I know that doesn’t help a ton – but hope it helps a little!