Expert: Greg Scholl - 11/7/2008

Question
Hello Mr. Scholl, 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, it sounds like they used too thick a stain, and just a pigmented stain, which, when applied too heavily, will look almost opaque, like thin paint. Hopefully, they are clear coating the stain, as stain alone is not a proper finish, especially for a kid's room as it will not hold up. They may have also used spray lacquer toners, which can also obscure grain. This type of deep coloring should be undertaken with Dye stains, sometimes in combination with a pigmented stain. Dye stains are transparent, and don't use ground pigments like paints and oil stains,so they don't obscure the grain like this. I don't think it would be unreasonable to ask them to redo these, but you have to realize that they'll have to strip off the finish with stripper, and they'll also have to change their technique, which they may not know how to do. Many people don't have experience with Dye stains, and they can be tricky to learn how to use. They also are less forgiving because they are solvent based dyes. The lamp you describe sounds rather light in color, so I'm a bit confused as to why they had to lay on the color so thickly. I think you'd have to expect to pay for this as well, at least 50%, if you accepted the furniture as it was without expressing your displeasure. Matching starkly different woods to each other is one of the trickiest finishing jobs there is, and sometimes certain woods don't look good certain colors, (like Oak with a Mahogany finish for instance), but I would talk to the store owner and negotiate a remedy. I'll bet this won't be the first time he's had to deal with this issue. Hope that helps- post back if need be- Greg