I am building an exterior mahogany foyer. I have 2 coats of poly on the wood and now I filled the nail heads and gaps with dark mahogany wood putty. However, the putty is drying much lighter than I would like, and even putting poly over it in one little test section doesn’t make it as dark as the surrounding wood. How can I stain the putty safely without marring the adjoining mahogany boards? I plan 2 more coats of poly to finish the surface.

Our house has cedar shake siding. When we bought the house it was 7 years old and had never been painted. The shakes had been dipped before they were installed, but I'm not sure what they were dipped in. When the house was about 14 years old (13 years ago) we had it painted with an oil based paint. It seemed to be a good paint job and it was still looking pretty good (a little faded) when we decided to re-paint it 3 years ago. Again we used an oil based paint. The house looked good for about a year and then the paint started to peel, especially on the south and south west sides where the exposure to the sun is the worst. The problem is that the paint is peeling back to bare wood not to the previous paint job. Any ideas on why both layers of paint would peel off together? Trying to scrape all of the shakes on the house back to bare wood before repainting would be a huge effort. Just wondered what alternatives we might have.