Adventures in Staining

The cabinet has been well loved. You can see by the glass water marks that it needed to be refinished.

My major home DIY furniture efforts have been fairly limited. I have only painted 2 other pieces of furniture in our home; a behemoth armoire desk found on craigslist and my brother’s childhood bed which is now in use by my 4-year-old.

Each time, I refinish furniture I ask myself halfway through, “Why am I doing this?” This project was no different!

I borrowed my dad’s sander to make the sanding go smoother. It was part way through the sanding when I started cursing my tightwad nature that prevented me from just buying a TV cabinet in the color I wanted. This is probably why I don’t DIY.

There was a thick clear coat on the cabinet. My 80 grit sandpaper was barely distressing it and I knew I needed to do a good job so my stain work would be worth the effort. After a morning of very little head way, my husband ran to the store to get a higher grit sandpaper. He got both 40 and 60 grit and the 60 worked perfectly. The 40 grit was too coarse.

After sanding and thoroughly wiping off the dust, I was ready to stain. I wanted as few steps as possible so I chose stain with polyurethane already in it so I could skip the final polyurethane coat, the final clear coat to protect your furniture. Bombay Mahogany was the darkest color available. I had some reservations about the word mahogany since I was worried it would be too reddish. I decided to purchase it anyway because I really want the ease of one step.

What started as a weekend project turned into a week-long project. DIY efforts typically involve an element of learning as you go. And blogging about those DIY efforts means I can share mistakes with you and save you time! One of my mistakes was using a paint brush.