Wow! Staining the dresser for the first time. What a difference!

Finally!

After months of on and off paint stripping, sanding and repairs I was finally ready to start making this 80-year-old dress look like something. Even bare it looked about a hundred times better than it did painted and the maple had such a wonderful natural shine to it that I strongly considered just adding a clear coat and leaving it the way it was. But it wouldn’t match any other furniture in the room and a lot of clear coats yellow over time, so I decided to stain it a color that would match the rest of my son’s furniture.

That proved to be a tricky process unto itself.

First I went to the local hardware store to look at stains and quickly became overwhelmed with the types of stains (water-based, oil based, gel stains and many more) and the different colors. Each had its own application method, its own strengths and weaknesses and each would only work well with different protectorant finishes. I surfed a lot of websites and read a lot of conflicting advice. There are entire books written on finishing wood, so I can’t possibly cover all the possibilities, but a good “primer” (ha!) on the topic of choosing a wood stain can be found over at HowStuffWorks.com.

Adding to the complexity of stain type and coloring is the way certain stains look different on different types of wood. I used my guides to wood types and was pretty sure my dresser was made out of maple, so I picked up a small plank of light maple at the hardware store as well as several different types of stains and colors to run some tests.

I strongly recommend you do this before you start staining a piece of furniture, even if you’re going to try to stain it in a hidden area. I went back and forth with various stains and colors and even application methods before I finally settled on a MinWax GelStain and a Minwax oil-based Polyurethane combination which seemed to yield the best results for me.

I also recommend spending $20 or so on a professional staining brush. Sure, you could buy a cheap $1 throw away brush but I was EASILY able to tell a difference in the two test areas when I switched between the cheap and expensive brush. The expensive brushed spread the stain much better and didn’t fall apart after a few minutes. Believe me, when you’re working with stain (much more permanent than paint in many cases) you want to be absolutely sure everything is perfect before you begin.

And so on a warm day in August I put on some old clothes, laid the dresser pieces out in the driveway, and proceeded to stain them all slowly and methodically, exactly as instructed. For the GelStain I applied it evenly with a brush, waited ten minutes and then used clean lint-free rags to wipe off the stain.

My first reaction was an audible, “Wow!”

Once the first piece dried I ran it inside and compared it to the other furniture in my son’s room. It was a perfect match, which made all the testing of colors and products well worth it. After all the staining I took my brush and soaked it in mineral spirits for a few minutes and washed it out, basically returning the brush to an almost-new state.

The staining was fast, but adding the clear Polyurethane was a much slower process. You can only apply that on a level, flat surface and it needs to dry about six hours between coats. So I would turn the dresser on its side and lay it on a large piece of cardboard in my garage. I would then apply an even coat of Polyurethane slowly and evenly and then, barely breathing, I would clean out my brush and slip out of the garage, trying not to stir up any dust that might float around and land in my clear finish. I decided to apply three coats to every side of the dresser, so I would apply one coat in the morning before I went to work, apply another coat when I came home and then wait until the next morning to apply the third coat. After that dried I would flip the dresser to another side and start all over. It took over a week to completely protect the drawers and dresser.

At last I was done. I put on the new drawer pulls (which again matched the other furniture in the room) and took it into my son’s room about a month before he was actually born. Even if this wasn’t for a baby’s room, you always want to give any refinished furniture a week or two to “air” out the odors.

All in all the project was a fun one and I would definitely consider trying this again with another piece of old furniture. I made a lot of mistakes and took much longer than I originally planned but the sense of accomplishment I feel whenever I walk into that room and see the finished dresser made it all worthwhile.