An apartment six floors above the ocean is a generous brief and an unforgiving climate. The air carries salt, the humidity swings twenty points between monsoon and dry season, and every timber element in the flat is quietly moving all year.
Movement is not a defect
We now assume movement and detail for it, rather than hoping a sealant will hold the line. Shadow gaps instead of flush junctions. Floating panels rather than fixed sheets. Doors hung with a millimetre more clearance on the leading edge than a showroom would ever accept — because in March that millimetre is the reason the door still closes.
Finish matters as much as species. Two-pack systems look immaculate on handover and then fail invisibly from behind; a penetrating oil is duller on day one and honest for a decade, because it can be refreshed by anyone with a cloth and an afternoon.
Specify the repair, not just the finish. Coastal timber is a relationship, not a delivery.
Where the exposure is genuinely severe — a balcony soffit, an outdoor kitchen — we stop arguing with the sea and change material. Powder-coated aluminium behind a timber-toned laminate has none of the romance and all of the service life. Honesty about that is part of the job.