The old coat of solid stain that has weathered makes a good prime coat if it's clean, dull & dry and is a sound coat, meaning not peeling or compromised in some other way. Duration is a house paint, whereas the other is a stain. The chief difference is the dry film thickness and sheen. the thin dry film makes the stain follow the contours of the wood and can give you a more authentic or maybe even rustic look, depending on the wood. It will almost always be flat, with no shine at all. The thicker coat will more fill in the grain of the wood and probably have an eggshell or higher shine, maybe even to a satin or semi-gloss. It most likely will not be available flat. A thinner coat means shorter life, the trade-off reflected in the price. A properly applied thicker coat of duration can be expected to last a good long while, but I wouldn't use anyone's "lifetime". If the wood has roughness or character to it, that you want to exploit for a certain look, I'd put stain on it. If the wood is smooth, almost shiny the way it is, I'd use house paint.

I just had a bathroom and bedroom remodeled in my house. My contractors told me to go to Sherwin Williams to pick out a color, so I went to the local SW showroom and picked a color called High Reflective White and told them I wanted it in semigloss for the walls. They tried to talk me into flat or eggshell, but I insisted on semigloss because I like the way it looks and everything else in my house is painted in semigloss and I've NEVER had a problem with semigloss paint. The owner/foreman of the contractor company said to me "you shouldn't use semigloss, it's going to peel right off the walls" - I thought he was joking. The day that the contractor's workers did painting, they brought in a 5 Gallon bucket of Promar200 paint - I wasn't expecting Promar, I was expecting one of the other Sherwin Williams brands. So, anyway, the workers started slapping paint on the brand new drywall WITHOUT putting primer on first. They did 2 coats of paint in the bathroom and bedroom on a Friday. I could still see purple wallboard through the paint so I did a third coat in the bathroom over the weekend. I have done a LOT of painting in my 51 years and I've never seen paint go on so poorly. It took forever to dry and it was very thin going on the walls. Since there was more construction to be done, the paint got nicked up in several places and I was absolutely shocked that the nicked paint literally led to THE PAINT PEELING RIGHT OFF THE WALL! I was in utter disbelief. If I tried to fix the edges of the nicks and scrapes, the paint literally started to peel right off the wall in sheets. Mind you, the bathroom was not yet in use at all! In fact, due to poor workmanship throughout the project that I complained about, the contractors that I hired literally ghosted me and walked off the job and I've since had to hire other competent contractors to come in and fix the problems...I haven't had a working bathroom for 12 weeks now, but that's another story...back to the peeling paint... The second contractors that I had to hire had to replace the new window that was installed in the bathroom by the first contractors because it was the wrong type of window (new construction with nail fin, and should have been replacement) and it was installed incorrectly on top of that. Because the new contractors had to cut away drywall around the window to replace it, the paint literally peeled off the wall as the drywall was being removed. I'm now in the process of peeling ALL of the paint off the walls so that I can add a primer coat and use something other than Promar200 which has to be the cheapest and worst paint on the face of the earth. So far, I peeled this much off in about 10 minutes. The smattering of paint that's in the lower left corner of the peeled area is where I tried to use a heat gun to scrape away the paint...that part is now stuck to the wallboard just slightly better than the rest of the paint, but as you can see, it's literally peeling off in sheets.

uscpsycho--we just had the entire interior of our historic 1905 remodel painted Modern Gray and I love it! There is a LOT of trim--chunky moldings and baseboards and window casings. We painted all of that SW Alabaster and love it too. It is a creamy white without yellow undertones. I will try to find pics to upload for you to see. Also--rughdesign.com is a blog devoted entirely to Sherwin Williams colors and has an extensive library of each color and what other SW paint compliments that color. I relied on her blog a lot. Best of luck! Fun but very stressful choosing paint colors.

@Sheila Rush have you picked flooring, counter tops, cabinets, backsplash yet? Those fixed elements should really help decide your wall color. Also how light or dark you want your walls, Natural Choice is the lightest with an LRV of 73, Natural Linen has an LRV of 66 and Accessible Beige is the darkest with an LRV of 58. All three of your choices are part of the yellow hue family, but AB and NL are closer to the red side of the color wheel (warmer) and NC is closer to the green side of the color wheel (cooler). Hope that helps!