Beautiful Table, With A Special Stain

I have a beautiful dining set to show you today!  This set with a table, two leaves, five side chairs and two 'captains' chairs had been refinished at some time by a company other than ours.  The woman who owns this set remembered in her childhood it being a beautiful color of brown and wanted to get the set back to that color.  We were able to come very close for her.

As you can see, the color now is just beautiful.  We used a stain that you just can't get anywhere other than here, that is because it is supposed to be a 'walnut' stain but when the manufacturer mixed up our batch, he left one of the colors out, so we call it 'Mistake Walnut'.  It is a great color and we think the manufacturer should start offering it as part of their regular line up!

On top of this water based stain, we applied our water based finish in a 'satin' sheen.  This is actually the most popular sheen among our customers.  And reasonably so, it gives a bit of shine, but not to much maintenance.  And whether you choose Mat finish or High Gloss finish, eventually, maybe 10 years down the road, they all end up Satin anyway.  All the rubbing and polishing, and subtle scratching brings a Mat finish up and a High Gloss finish down.

What do you think of our 'Mistake Walnut' stain?  Do you like the color or do you think that mistakes are mistakes for a reason and we should have send the product back?

Overcoming the Power of an Old Berry Stain

We have a few pieces in, from different customers, which offer us a unique challenge.  These pieces came in to be stripped of their old finish, and have a new finish applied.  All of  these items went through the stripping process, after which we discovered that part of the original staining work would linger.  You see, these pieces were colored with a dye, that could not be removed in stripping.

This dye is a Berry based stain and penetrates the wood fibers to permanently color them, as opposed to a pigment color, which we would use, that sits on top of the wood.  You can find this dye used in old furniture as well as modern, so we never know when it will pop up.

 Sometimes this kind of dye is used on a lighter colored wood, such as Poplar to make it match, say a Mahogany wood, then a pigment stain can be applied over both, and it will look like they are the same kind of wood.

In the case of this Piano Stool, we were able to remove some of the color during the prep sanding process, which left the red in the crevices.  Instead of letting this be a problem, we used the red as a natural 'highlighting', to give the stool some extra character.  Then we used a medium Cherry dye which helped to even the color out without making the stool to dark.  Of course the stool has our super earth friendly Water Based Finish over all of that!

How do you think the stool looks?  Have you ever had to deal with a dye stain like this?  If so, what did you end up doing with the new  finish?  We would love to hear, in the comments below.