Wood staining can enhance the natural look of wood and really enhance your project. It can also be challenging to get professional-like results, and from experience, having to re-stain is a lot of work. There is also a wide vary of products on the market. I like to have a few colors of stain on hand for each project as different wood is going to take up stain differently.
Check out the difference on how wood type and level of preparation impacts the stain color.
Douglas Fir (unsanded). Stains: Early American | Provincial | Dark Walnut
Spruce (sanded). Stains: Early American | Provincial | Dark Walnut
Hemlock (sanded). Stains: Weathered Gray | Early American | Provincial | Honey
Goals for your project and stain selection:
- Enhance the grain on clean wood: I have found that an oil based stain gives me the best results.
- A custom color: New water based stains offer tintable solutions. Although I find they sit a little heavier, mute the grain, and were less forgiving compared to oil. You can also get two oil colors and mix – We mixed the Gray with Provincial for our hardwood floors and it looked fantastic!
- Cover existing stain without much prep work: a decent gel stain will cover old stain with minimum work if you want to go darker.
Products to make the job go easy:
For most of my recent design and build projects, I’ve been relying on the following three items (in the order as shown). Although, I’ve swapped the color and poly finish to suit as needed.
- Pre-Stain – Minwax Pre-Stain. I can’t stress how important a wood conditioner is. It ensures a smooth even stain pickup by the wood. It stops certain woods from soaking up to much color (getting over dark). Thinning a top coat could also work, but I save that for wood end-grains.
- Stain Applicator – These are easier to use than an old white t-shirt. Nicer application than a foam brush. Still, old shirts work!
- Foam Brushes – Foam brushes for poly coats work great!
- 600 grit sandpaper – add a little water and lightly buff that poly coat to a smooth finish.
- Gloves – the Atlas 370BBK gloves are my go to when my hands could get dirty. I’ve even washed them (not recommended if you’ve got stain on them).
