In the back of my house, I have terraced gardens. Most walls are stacked river rock. The lowest (and largest) is made of thick rectangles of wood, the size of railroad ties (only longer). They are quite ugly. I looked at prices of replacement rock or bricks, and I don’t have that much money, damnit. Getting rid of the huge posts will also be problematic.
So it occured to me while putting grout between tiles–coat the damn things with some colored mortar of some type.
Any suggestions as to what I could coat them with? I think the main issues will be adhesion and cracking (because there will be a long and thin layer).
You’re right, it won’t adhere, and it will crack. The timbers will heave and move around, and you’ll just have a bigger mess to clean up.
Use some small creeping vines to grow over the timbers, (if they’re in a good position to do this) and let time do it’s work. Alternately, if the timbers are sound and dry, and well drained, there are a lot of veneer-type bricks you might use, but the cost brings you back to too expensive again.
Think about paint? some marine epoxies are quite nice, and if you’re careful, you can do a Martha-Stewart and handpaint them to look like granite or marble slabs.
Good luck! Without knowing what the situation looks like, I may have just suggested some stupid stuff, but i hope it jogged your imagination.
b.
I’ll second what Billy Rubin said. It will crack and fall off. I guess (as in WAG) that you could put pressure treated plywood against and on top of the ties and stucco that, but this would be a lot of work and would still crack (a lot.)