What wood and finish for an outdoor table and chair set?

[Dave Schreib]

My daughter lives in NC and has a covered porch. I'd like to build her a set of outdoor chairs and a small table.

Besides cedar, what would be a good wood choice for this project? And what kind of finish would provide the best protection and maybe easily maintained?

Thanks in advance

[Kent A Bathurst]

Teak

More realistic $$ - white oak

Finish - none. Let it weather to a silver-grey

[Brad Schmid]

Cypress is very good for outdoor furniture.

[Andrew Hughes]

I also vote for cypress.
Bald cypress. Did do you know cedar is really cypress. The cypress that grows in the swamps is extremely rot resistant.
no finish just make it smooth.

[Kent A Bathurst]

yeah - forgot about cypress - ++

[Mel Fulks]

Cypress is good ,when it is old enough. Young cypress has little resistance to rot.

[John TenEyck]

Accoya or torrified wood. No finish needed.

John

[Thomas McCurnin]

Cedar and stain.

[Dave Schreib]

Thanks for all the replies.

[Lee Schierer]

Western red cedar is far more resistant to rot that eastern white cedar.

[Lee Schierer]

There are a number of Cedar varieties. Western Red Cedar is far more rot resistant than Eastern White Cedar. Aromatic Red Cedar is not very rot resistant.

[Richard Daugird]

I have some cedar as well, I'm not sure if it is Western Red or Arimatic. It was cut in Texas near the Gulf Coast.

[John C Cox]

Another vote for Cypress. I fixed up a wooden slatted cast iron frame outdoor bench with cypress about 10 years ago, and it's been living in swampy low country South Carolina for 10-years now, and it's still going strong. The original Chinesuim wood lasted about 3-years before rotting to pieces. It works well, just a little splitty unless you pre-drill 100% of holes.

Western red cedar is nice stuff and easy to buy in the home store, but so incredibly soft and mushy. Look at it funny and it dents and chips.

Redwood is stronger, but good luck finding that. I built a picnic table out of used redwood deck boards. It's nice, but light. This stuff was ~20 years old and rotting on the ends. The wood past the 1-2" on the ends was still good, so viola. I got a picnic table for the price of the screws.

Eastern red cedar is good stuff, and is commonly used on outdoor things in South Carolina. It's about a million times more durable in real life than Western red cedar. The downside is that you won't be able to get any unless you know a miller who cuts it. As an aside, our last dog loved eating things made of eastern red cedar.

Teak - great stuff, but costs a fortune. Hard to find too.

Ebano/Brazilian teak/Cumaru/Ipe - Great stuff, but I swear it weighs more than concrete or steel. This is the sort of thing that makes portable furniture immovable. It also dulls tools like crazy.

White oak. Nice stuff. Heavy. I don't feel like this stuff weathers as well as you would like. It gets a fuzzy, dirty look after a couple years. Expensive and harder to find now. The sap wood is not nearly as rot resistant as the heart wood. There are about a hundred species of Oak in the US lumped into "Red" and "White" oak. Be sure you get actual, bona-fide non-thru-porous White Oak, and not some flavor of thru-porous beige/green looking red oak.

Pressure treated SYP. Yeah. Strong. Reliable. Available locally. Not going to cost you a fortune. If all else fails, punt and use this. It holds up really well outdoors. The non-ground contact rated stuff no longer contains Arsenic, so it's not quite as bad for you. A year weathering should take care of this.

Finish wise... Thompson's water seal or a commercial deck finish for a natural finish.. Exterior paint or deck finish if you want a paint type finish. Unless you want to strip it and redo EVERY year, don't use spar varnish or urethane varnish products. They crack and peel off disappointingly quickly.