Now that we have completed all the rock walls in the left side of the yard, they will need to be capped with wood like our other wall. As I was refreshing my memory on how I did the cap on the first one, I realized how worn it was.

Since it has been a few years, it has gotten faded, worn and dirty, which means that when I do the new caps, they will look quite different. I will try to colour match, possibly going with a slightly darker stain, but they will still likely be noticeably different…at least for a few years until the new ones have been worn down a bit.

I decided to refresh the one that is faded looking. Unfortunately we don’t have a pressure washer right now, so I cleaned it and scrubbed it as best I could. I know I could have sanded it, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I figured worst case, I wouldn’t like the stain on the faded wood and would sand it next spring and do the new caps at the same time, making it all match better.

The good news, I really like the way it turned out. Although I like cedar stain, this is a better colour. Recently, Ipswich Pine has become my preferred stain. And the cedar on the faded wood ended up coming out less orange in colour and more of the neutral darker tone of the Ipswich Pine colouring.

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Although you can see some darker areas where the dirt was engrained, the overall look turned out great. It pairs nicely with the bench and table I recently refreshed.