We bought some wood Tiles (Anne Sacks) made of Walnut mounted on some kind of masonite type board (we will have to deal with that as a separate issue) for the interior bar of a restaurant.  All is well and it looks great.

There is a covered take out area and we want to have  this product installed outside.  We are installing a black metal base and will hold the material off the ground by 4″.  (This is Boston, MA so there is some probably of a snow).  There is no direct sunlight that can touch this wood tiles.  While its not alot of s.f. this material costs $38 s.f. (maybe 100 s.f. +/-)

 Product is coated with Sherwin Williams Conversion Varnish Self Seal V84F83.   We are told we would need to strip these very small mosaic style pieces before we can recoat with something that would hold up better to an exterior application.  The pieces are back nailed and glued (with what we are told is an exterior quality glue).

Material was approved by historic board and we would have to go back for an approval which could take longer than it will be before the restaurant opens so there is great pressure to figure out how to use this material or come up with something that looks similiar.

Anyone have any ideas besides returning material for restocking charge and custom fabricating mosaic pieces and installing them individually on the plywood wall? Pieces are say 6″ long by 1″ wide and very in depth (waves)….