I really should be working on my windows, but I managed to get a few days off spending the weekend in beautiful Ruidoso, NM. It's only a 2 hour drive north of El Paso and well worth the trip. I was too lazy to snap some pics, but I found a pic online for your viewing pleasure. While there, I managed to check out a flea market and really wasn't expecting to find much of anything. As luck would have it, find something I did.
Now I know everyone's thinking it's an antique and how dare he think about stripping off the original finish, but it's really not. Honestly I'm not quite sure how old it is, but it is solid wood (pine, oak?) and was a dirt cheap $25. When I got home I proceeded to sand it down and stain it a deep brown, walnut wainscot I believe.
Unfortunately, I was a little too hasty to think I could bang this out in an evening and didn't take my time with it. I noticed the stain wasn't taking as well as it should and saw several dark blotches where the sanding wasn't uniform. Trying to compensate, I kind of made the stain have a "distressed" appearance to even out the blotchiness. I had my doubts on how it would turn out, but decided to give it to the morning. My wife agreed that the blotchiness didn't look very good and I should fix it. So, yeah I'm sanding it down again. This time I'm sanding the hell out of it just to make sure. No more mistakes, thank you.
4 comments:
It looks like birch (or maple)....both of which don't take stain easily....so, don't take it personally. If you trip it off, sand with a very fine sand paper and then put down a very, very thin coat of shellac (thin with paint thinner) and then stain and that should help it take better.
Ah yes, birch or maple.. probably one of those. I've never tried using a light shellac to help stain take better. Does that work pretty good? I've taken the brute force approach and sanded by hand instead of the palm sander. It gives me more control and I can "feel" that the surface is getting sanded uniformly. I don't know.. I got a good feeling about my second try.
I'm convinced the wood wasn't sanded well enough the first go round. The wood definitely feels more raw now then the semi smooth finish it had before I stained. If not, maybe the 3rd time will be the charm. On second thought I'd rather not. :)
25 bucks is a steal! That is a great coffee table. Hopefully in this case the second time will be the charm. ;)
$25! Lucky dog!
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