This porch in Southeast Portland was originally decked with plywood. It was cheap and rotting away from the rain hitting it over the years. The railing was also in pretty bad shape, so we replaced both of them. We went with a tongue and groove tight knot cedar for the decking and a tight knot cedar for the hand rail. We used a high quality oil based natural cedar stain for the decking and pickets and a solid oil based white stain for the rails. The white helped to visually tie in the railing  to the existing white posts and the contrast between the white and natural cedar looked really nice. The overall effect was a drastic improvement over the original painted deck. This customer was very happy with the result and so were we!