Expert: Eileen Cronk - 11/7/2008

Question
Hello Ms. Cronk, I just purchased some unfinished pieces for my son's bedroom and had them all stained to match a lamp I already had (I belive the lamp base is parawood, and is stained in a medium honey color with reddish undertones).  The peices I had stained to match were made of birch, pine, or parawood.  Well, the birch piece looks gorgeous and is the perfect color.  The parawood pieces, however, look like they were painted with a thin brown paint rather than stained.  You can barely see the wood grain at all, and it just looks odd.  I am not quite sure what to do. I'm really unhappy with how they turned out, but I feel awful about asking the stainers to re-do them.  I know they worked really hard to match the color of the lamp on all three different types of wood.  What do you suggest?  Would it be unreasonable to ask them to re-do the parawood pieces?  If not, should I expect them to do it for free?  The stainers I used work with the furniture store where I purchased the pieces.  The store owner said they do this sort of thing really well (staining different pieces to match, that is).  Should the store owner be responsible for paying for the re-do?  I am just sick over this and have no experience in this area.  Thanks so much for your advice.

Answer
Hi Annie
Nice to hear from you.
Oh my goodness this is a problem.
A lot of thoughts are going through my mind here Annie so I hope I can get them down so you will understand (my mind works like that sometimes LOL).
First off I had never heard of parawood before so I looked it up.
Its a hardwood that apparently works well and finishes well.
Birch I am very familiar with as we cut a lot of it here on our property and I love working with it. Its takes a stain well.
Pine is a softwood and I am very familiar with it also.
Its finicky stuff to stain at times. Sometimes it looks great other times its looks awful.
If you brought me these three woods and asked me to stain them so they all looked identical, I would tell you its impossible..it just can't be done with stain.
And its not the stain, its the wood.
And I am thinking your "stainers" would know this too and they never stained the parawood but used a colored lacquer type finish.
You describe the parawood as now looking like "they were painted with brown paint rather than stained".
This is exactly the look you can get with lacquer.
And enough of it certainly covers the wood grain as you describe.
But I have no doubt they really worked at trying to get all the wood looking the same.
Annie I don't feel its at all unreasonable to ask them to redo these pieces.
There is a bit of (I hate to say fault), but I feel it rests on the sales person in a way.
You should have been told to get pieces made of the same wood if you wanted them all matching, and perhaps the salesperson tried to get you in that direction I don't know.
Certainly a lack of knowledge but not on your part as we depend on the seller to know these things.
So what to do?..........I would go back to the store (not the stainers), with the pieces and kindly ask that they be redone at their expense.
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Kind Regards
Eileen
PS let me know the results.