Aging exterior wood can be dangerous stuff. Although it survives the elements just fine without any kind of finish, the ever-present temptation to brighten up greying exterior wood with paint or stain usually leads to a cycle of serious regret. Everyone’s happy at first – after that new finish masks the barn board grey colour – but a year or two of peeling leaves aged wood looking much worse than before, requiring a lot of scraping and refinishing to bring back a sense of decency. There is at least one sane approach for sprucing up the appearance of aging, bare outdoor wood that’s fast and effective. It involves a process of sanding and oiling that I put into practice most recently as part of a volunteer crew fixing up an old playground. It works just as well on new wood, too. Oiling doesn’t add colour, but it does create a fresher,…