Picardy Project

building shit & raising girls

Testing More Stain

I feel like I am always testing stains. There was the first time we stained our kitchen floors and I tested about 84 stain samples. Then when we stained our front room floors we were unhappy with the color and quality of the Minwax kitchen stain so we tested more stains. Then I worked on custom blending and testing stains to match the original baseboards of the house. And THEN I tested stains for our built in hutch. It’s official, I am a stain testing master.

Unfortunately the master has been a procrastinator lately and Chris has all the face frames built for our bed and I have been MIA on getting them stained

Whoopsie.

Finally on Tuesday I got to it. I brought out all of our Zar stain to test out

Chris already cut down some samples of cherry for me to test the stains on

The stack on the left is untreated and the stack on the right has been pre-treated with a conditioner to allow the stain to take to the wood more evenly. In the past I’ve never been impressed with pre-conditioners, but we thought we’d give it another try.

I labeled all the backs with the stain colors

The other marks on the wood indicate if the samples have been pre-conditioned or not (slash for no, wavy line for yes). Then I popped opened all the cans and stained the sample wood. Except for Dark Mahogany

Doh. I guess I never closed it properly after we used it before. The good news is that’s the stain that we used for the hutch in the TV room, so we’re very familiar with the color

After all the samples got stained with the first coat I set them out to see how things were looking

I wasn’t a fan of the top two right off the bat (Provincial on the top left and Chestnut on the top right) but I really liked Early American (bottom left) and Moorish Teak (bottom right). When we were testing stains for the hutch I had really liked Moorish Teak and Chris had really liked Dark Mahogany, so it should really be no surprise that that’s a top choice for me again 🙂 And we eventually went with Dark Mahogany because Chris lets me win on so many things that it’s definitely fair to let things even out from time to time.

After coat #2 on the samples, here’s how things developed

Before we talk about what stain I like the best, let’s talk about the weird finish you get on the pr-conditioned pieces. Between each coat of stain it’s necessary to give the wood a light sanding. But look at how much it highlights the area that got sanded the most

Of course it’s most desirable to give a perfect, even sanding, but that’s basically impossible. There are always going to be areas that get a little more sanding than others because it’s impossible to give the exact same pressure everywhere all the time. And it would suck to have all the imperfections in sanding highlighted. After coat 1 of the stain the pre-conditioned pieces of wood were looking a lot better, but after coat 2 I like the pieces of wood that weren’t pre-conditioned better.

Now, that aside, I’m unsure of which stain I like the best. Though I do love Moorish Teak (the darkest stain) I think it might just be too dark for a bed. The bed will be large and I’m afraid it will just suck the life out of the room. I wasn’t a fan of Provincial on the top left, but now I think I’m liking it a lot more

I’m still not a fan of Chestnut (the top right stain). So it looks like it might be between the two left samples: Provincial and Early American

Good thing those are the two Chris likes best too.

Which one is your favorite? Got any advice about the pre-conditioner?

Comments

  1. A couple of comments coming from a fellow staining fiend:

    – The pre-conditioner you get from the big box stores is marginal at best. I have had decent results with it on birch, ok on pine. But the absolute best stuff is Charles Neil's Pre-Color Conditioner. It's more expensive and you have to get it off the internet, but boy it does the trick. It's water-based but after it dries I stain with my oil-based stain as per usual. Can't recommend this stuff enough. Check out cn-woodworking.com.

    – I also usually stain 2+ coats but I never sand in between. I am using an oil-based stain. I leave the sanding for after I get a couple coats of wipe-on poly on.

    – Speaking of poly, that Minwax stuff you see everywhere is ok, but if you really want your stuff looking beautiful, check out General Finishes Arm-R-Seal. It's a wipe-on (which is better in my opinion, but needs more coats)and I use the semi-gloss on everything. Gives the finish incredible depth.

  4. Hi – I have read about your house renovation sporadically over the past year or so. It is a great source of inspiration since I have spent the past 4 years remodeling my own home as well. We have built on rooms, moved walls, and touched nearly every surface in the place.
    As for staining – I have preferred Old Masters Gel Stain when redoing antique furniture and my kitchen cabinets. My house was built in 1956 and the kitchen cabinets were the original real wood cabinets. Even though I hated the color, I couldn't bring myself to rip them out so I spent nearly 6 months sanding and staining every inch. With most stains you have to reapply multiple times – I was not going to be staining/sanding the entire kitchen more than once. After a lot of research, I found a wood dye (Sher-wood Universal Dye Concentrate) that dyed the wood first and then 1 coat of stain gave a nice rich color. No need to sand in between coats. I have now used the dye on multiple projects with varying types of wood and it has worked well on all of them. The bottle of dye is not cheap – so this may be more than you want to spend for this smaller project but something to keep in mind for future larger projects.