We had a lovely cedar arbor we built over our front sidewalk about 15 years ago and let it go gray naturally. We ended up taking it down a couple years ago and rebuilding it - again out of cedar. The exception this time was to use a penetrating oil stain on each piece before we put it together. We attached a metal trellis on both sides (used metal U brackets) where the vines grow. (Sorry, I don't know how to make this picture upright when I post it.)

Hi BigDogLover, I'll be sure to get a picture to you at some point when it's done. I'm really excited for how well it'll turn out (Lord willing). The whole thing about pine being soft is an over-generalization. What I've been told is that while we take all species of wood (and there are tons - to name a few of the most popular: white oak, red oak, walnut, ash, beech, maple, cypress, white pine, yellow pine, alder, elm, cherry, hickory, birch, teak, mahogany, cedar, ETC.) and split all those many species into only two categories - hardwoods and softwoods - that it's not nearly so black-and-white; that is to say, there is a much more gradient scale between hard and soft. There are several different species of pine out there, some of which are quite hard -- and southern yellow pine (often referred to as just "yellow pine" or "southern pine") is one of the hard ones (it's over twice as hard as eastern white pine, which is what most people are picturing in their mind when thinking of easily-dented "soft pine"). When people start poo-pooing pine, I tell them what I just told you, and I remind them that the entire framing structure of a house is pine, and pine has been used for flooring and exterior siding and lots of other uses for centuries, and holds up very very well (if maintained properly, which applies to almost any wood). The floors in my house, which was built in 1938, are southern yellow pine (it was at that time, and still is now, very abundant and thus affordable), have never been refinished or really even maintained, and they look great. If I look half this good when I'm 70, it'll be worth drinking to. By "hack traditional", I'm referring to a pet peeve of mine whereby fast-talking sharp-accent rich folks from New York and New Jersey and Michigan and the like, move here to the South - and then, with zero regard to tradition or rural identity or historical integrity - they build a huge modern house that clashes with all the antebellum and mill-era homes that make up the traditional Southern landscape - and they think it's "Southern" because it has a wraparound porch. I'm talking about the people that weren't born or raised here by parents born and raised here - the people who have no real understanding of the fact that this is a region of the larger nation which has its own cultural and architectural identity which ought to be faithfully preserved. The people who see the South simply as a warm, relaxed, "country" sort of place to be exploited and built-up. I find it offensively condescending that rather than seeing me and where I come from as a distinct culture that ought to be respected, that we're viewed as a commodity that can be marketed (I'm picturing that "Luzianne authentic Southern iced tea" TV commercial with the disembodied ceiling fans, and Cracker Barrel, and my blood's about to boil). People don't seem to grasp that everyone with a high-stress job in some dirty city up north wants to come to the warm rural South to relax out in the country - but if enough people do that, you don't have a "country" any more...rural becomes suburbia really quickly, and that destroys the character and feel of the place, not to mention drags along the noise and the crime and the filth and the various other associated problems, and drives up our tax rates, etc. I've seen a tobacco field outside my front door for decades, and I'd like not to see it poured over with concrete and some "planned community" of big 2- and 3-story vinyl-clad cookie-cutter houses with the wide sidewalks and the manicured shrubbery and the BMW and Mercedes SUVs in the driveway, pop up. ANYHOW, sorry for going off on a diatribe for that long. It's a touchy subject for me. My family fought and died here, and I have a heritage and a connection that I deeply care about, and I stiffly resent the encroachment of rich non-Southerners and their big ugly greedy houses and their reprehensible lifestyles. They are to me what illegal Mexican immigrants are to Mr. Lou Dobbs. And in another meaning, when I say "hack traditional" - speaking purely in the architectural sense - I'm talking about folks who claim to want a "Southern traditional" or "Southern country" home - and yet they put in double-pane vinyl or aluminum-clad windows with the fake divided lites, and pre-finished hardwood flooring, and rocker switches, and vinyl siding, and hollow- or engineered-core or MDF doors, and a popcorn ceiling, and computerized kitchen appliances, and faux paint finishes on the walls, and new furniture with a "distressed" (read: fake) finish, and foam or no door and window casing, and roofing that isn't either 3-tab asphalt singles or 5v-crimp metal, and a walk-in pantry with a glass-panel door that has the word "pantry" etched on the glass with a picture of a wheat sheaf, etc. etc. etc. - I could list dozens more examples - there is a difference between real and pretend, between genuine and fake. When I say "traditional", I actually mean it. Not new mass-produced cheap garbage made artificially to look old, and modern architectural details which are in no way traditional or uniquely-Southern. I'm going to shut up about this now before I pop my aorta. Back to the original topic: yellow pine makes an excellent floor. And if you put the right type of finish on it, it has a beautifully warm glow to it and will hold up very well to normal usage (i.e. not doing the can-can on it while wearing steel-spiked golf shoes) -FaSoLa

To follow up in case anyone else runs into this problem in the future. After looking at the floor with the builder and several different professional floor guys....the builder agreed that he screwed up and he hired one of the floor guys to grind the entire floor with a diamond tipped blade/disc.....polish with a polishing disc....and now he is going to re-stain. The grinding made the rough spots much better and got out all of the leaf marks etc. He was even able to patch the hole. However, I am worried about several by-products of the grinding. 1) The patch on the hole looks much better than a big hole....but makes a square with a different "texture" than the rest of the concrete. I am concerned with how this will look when stained. Floor guy said he would go in and make it look less of a defined straight edge shape so it would blend better....but haven't seen this yet. 2) The grinding left a swirl pattern in the floor. I haven't been able to see what the polishing did yet...it may have removed this pattern. My wife thought it looked nice....but I will have to see how it looks after stain. 3) The grinding took off most of the "paste" and now aggregate shows through. I know some people go for this "terrazzo" look....but I am worried about it looking more commercial than residential. I am hoping that going with a darker water based stain will hide most of this. I will follow up with pictures after the stain is completed.

Are you sure the cleaning treatments will be compatible with the unspecified "flexible grout"? I would save patches for the nearly last stages, evaluating whether cracks and craters should be left alone, cleaned, or opened up, and might consider epoxies (sandable!) or mud (sandable!) for fill in general over caulk if you're using a non-opaque stain.