Pinterest Failure and Recovery

 

Pinterest had a few people that have done a technique making painted furniture and doors look like wood pieces.  It is a faux wood technique using gel stain.  I watched the videos and read the blogs where peeps did this technique and the pieces really did look like wood.

As you can see the white armoire is very pretty but it just blends too much with the white walls.  I am trying to add more natural wood pieces like this bench and baskets along with my bamboo shades to bring in some texture to my whites.

I was excited when we got the gel stain which is oil based and began to apply it to the armoire.  I thought hmmm that really does look like natural wood.  We continued to apply the stain on the whole piece.

We finished this piece over week ago and the stain was still not drying.  I closed up the condo and put on the air to make sure there was no humidity. 
I followed what everyone else did and they said it should dry in 24 hours.  NOPE!!! A whole week and still not drying. 

With frustration we decided to go and get some polyurethane and applied it to hopefully help it dry. 
Well it dried but with a lot of blotchy areas.

Not a good end.  The wood was taking the stain in some spots and not so much in other areas.  It looked terrible as you can see in the picture above.

I was so frustrated and followed what everyone else had done and did not get good results. 
I knew I would not be happy with it like it was. 

Terry got some paint and stain stripper and we applied it and left it overnight and then began the painstaking job of scraping all the poly, stain and paint off the piece. 
What a mess and a waste of hours of  our life scraping that we will never get back!!!!

After scraping and removing the paint and stain we decided to put Kilz primer all over the piece.  Terry put on two coats. 

Then I sat and thought ok do I give up and not try this again and just pick out a paint color for this piece or do we try it again. 

We thought with using the primer instead of paint on the armoire maybe the stain would take better to the primer than paint with a finish on it.

I really wanted the wood look since that is what I had in the rest of the room.

Terry and I talked about it and decided to give it one more shot.  This time using water based stain instead of the Gel Stain which is oil based.  Terry thought maybe it was the gel stain being oil base that was not sticking properly to the paint even though this is what others were doing right over paint.   

This is after we applied a coat of Summer Oak water based stain.  I figured this would be a good base tone.  Went on easily and dried quickly.  Not like the gel stain that took days to dry and still was sticky and never fully dried.

This was the second color of water based stain. American Walnut gave a rich wood look.  We put it over the light Summer Oak color and let it dry.

Now it feels so much better in the room with my other natural wood and wicker pieces. 
LOL the blue painter's tape will be coming off the walls and floors as soon as I know it is competely dry. 


Now I am on the hunt for some kind of cool big antique unique handles.  Maybe some old door handles off vintage doors.  I want something unique to add some character to this piece.

What I learned. 
Don't give up even if you did everything right and it did not work out.  Think it through and try it again. 
I was ready to give up on the faux wood look.  I was going to repaint the piece a color other than white to keep it from being too much borning white but glad I tried the Faux Wood finish one more time with the water base instead of oil base stain.

If any of you are thinking of making your front doors or other furniture pieces look like wood I would suggest using the water base stain and not oil base.

Everything on pinterest seems to have the instructions to use the gel stain that is oil based.  It was a complete failure for my piece.  I like the finish I got with the water base fast drying stains.

The suggestion is to poly the finish or use wax to protect the finish.  Not sure I will do either.  It is not a piece like a table top that would get a lot of use so I think I am going to leave the armoire alone from doing any kind of finish.

Have a great Wednesday and rest of the week.
Hugs,
Kris

Parties: Love your Creativity