Well I finished installing my rotten pine bed wood with plastic deck boards. It looks very nice. Nice naturalish color and wood grain. I got lucky with the dimensions of the old bed wood and the new deck boards. The old eight board bed wood measure 5 3/4", but the plastic boards measure 5 1/2". I was able to cheat by moving the outer boards inward, thus preventing gaps which would not be covered up by the bed strips.
I cut spacers out of the scraps of the plastic boards to keep the wood from moving side to side (plastic doesn't expand like wood, so these spacers won't cause any buckling). I drilled holes in the middle of the spacers so that bed strip bolts will keep them in place. I put the spacers between the boards on the top of the 3 center cross sills (21 in total). I did have to drill a few holes in some of the cross sills to accommodate a few of the bed strip bolts, but not as many as I thought that would.
By the way, I did not router the grooves on the edges of the plastic boards for the bed strips. You can't even tell the difference. The grooves in the wood boards are there to capture the bed strips to keep everything in place when the wood expands and contracts. Not needed with plastic boards.
Carl
Last edited by 52Carl; 09/01/2019 1:19 AM.
