New bed wood options

[tdangle]

I'm redoing the wood bed in my 8' Fleetside truck. It is not a show truck and I do use it as a truck when needed. I just got a pine wood bed kit and am going to paint the bottom of the boards black with exterior wood paint and use a varnish primer and topcoat natural color varnish for the top exposed portion of the boards. Truck is garaged. At first I was going to paint the metal channels body color (med blue) to match the rest of the truck when finally painted, but am now thinking about coating the metal strips with a bed liner type material for durability and scratch resistance. Has anyone done this and have pictures. Or any other ideas/suggestions.