Posts: 202
Location: Angola, IN | You can use whatever you want. But how long it lasts, that depends on what you use and how you treat it.
Since you are putting carpet on it, why not just paint the wood? Go to Menards or Lowe's and buy a quart or two of oil based enamel and put several coats on it. It will last forever. Pay extra special attention to the end grain (the edges of plywood, the cut off ends of 2x4's etc....coat those extra well).
Since you are pretty concerned with cost, I assume you're not going out to buy polyester resin and sealing the wood in fiberglass resin. And that's okay. You can get away with a cheap quart of oil based paint. If you do use resin, one trick to get it to seal wood really well (to increase penetration of the resin into the wood substrate) is to head up the wood with a salamander heater or something like that, and thin the resin out with solvent. Do NOT add catalyst to the resin, and brush the hot resin onto hot wood and let it cool. When it cools, the resin will get sucked into the wood. It will still be very tacky (not cured). Then mix a batch of resin with some extra catalyst and spread that onto the wood, and all the uncured polyester will harden with the coat you just put on.
A trick I learned when I did my boat....
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