So I’m about to buy some real, grownup bookcases instead of the industrial black metal screw-it-together-yourself things from Target that I’ve been using all these years. There’s a local shop that has some good deals on the stuff they make on the premises (real wood, as opposed to the veneer ones from Ikea for about the same price), but it’s about $35-40 extra per bookcase to have them finished, so I’m planning on doing it myself.
I’m thinking of a nice medium cherry stain, so I go to Home Depot, and instantly I’m completely overwhelmed. Preconditioner, shellac, lacquer, oil-based stain, water-based gel stain, polyurethane, linseed oil (the warnings about spontaneous combustion certainly don’t reassure me here), various all-in-one combos…
So please educate me. What exactly do I need to buy here? I’d like the end product to be relatively stain-resistant, but not so shiny that it glows in the dark…that kind of soft sheen of a well-loved piece of old but solid furniture. What’s the best tool for applying the stuff? What should I look out for? What don’t they tell you on the jar? How much will I need to buy to do four 60" high, five-shelf bookcases? Technique? Cleanup? You guys are so much smarter than the morons who work at my local Home Depot (if you can even find one), so I’m depending on you!
Before you buy the cases, just buy a piece of wood from the harware store and try your hand. Finishing wood as you plan to do (it’s actually staining) is different from painting. It’s not hard, but an even hand helps. By the way, getting a “cherry” finish might make for a dissapointing end result - it likely will not look like the “cherry” furniture you see in stores. You may want to try a Mahogany shade instead. I like using a Minwax stain, typically 2 coats, and then finish with a polyurethane coating (which you can get in various leves of shinyness). Make sure that wherever you do this, your work area is well ventilated. If you do it in a living area, you may already want to pick out what color the new carpet should be
I really like the finish I have applied to several wood projects. I start with a good stain and then I apply several coats of Tung Oil by hand. When I say, “by hand,” I mean that I literally pour it onto my hands and apply it that way. I just rub it in until it is all soaked up by the wood. I allow the wood to sit overnight before I apply the next coat. The result is a nice, mellow patina-like look without the glossy shine associated with many wood finishes. And, it’s good for your hands, too.
if you are going to buy some real grown up bookcases - buy something nice, spend the extra dollars and get a good wood
or better yet
don’t buy new - shop around and get something used thats already got that patina of age you want - that way you get what you want and you don’t contribute to the manufacture of crap
Pine can be a pain as it doesn’t absorb stain evenly (so some parts wind up much darker than others).
This month’s “American Woodworker” has a nice article on staining pine (they show a multistep process involving sanding, raising fibres, sanding again, prestain treatment, stain, etc etc) which produces a pretty gorgeous end product. Not necessarily hard, just a bit time-consuming.
Roughly you will need to sand down to a nice smooth surface (start around 100 grit and work down to 220 grit), apply a pretreatment/conditioner (this helps the wood to absorb the stain more evenly), and then apply your stain and a few coats of a final finish. I’ve used Minwax “stain+polyurethane” which is stain plus poly finish in one, you can apply several coats and it was pretty simple to use.
Polyurethane finish is pretty indestructible over whatever stain you use. “Gloss” is the plastic, mirror-like finish that you don’t want, while “Matte” is a much less reflective cover. Make sure that all of your various coatings are compatible (certain types of stains and topcoats don’t play nicely together).
Isosleepy’s suggestion of practicing on a sample board first is a good one. Unfortunately there’s no real shortcuts to a quality finish, it will take a bit of time but the results are well worth it.
The ones I’m thinking about are nice, certainly much nicer than the veneer crapola that’s available in my price range. Solidly manufactured by hand, from a local place that also does custom work. Hardwood (oak, maple, or whatever) would cost me more than double.
I’d be happy to buy used ones if I’d seen any available that were in decent shape and fit the space I have available, but I haven’t. Nobody seems to give up good furniture like that. I’m still open to the idea, but I’m tired of looking around. I haven’t bought the new ones yet, though, and can’t until I finish unpacking from my move so that there’s actually somewhere to put them. If I find used ones in the meantime, either in decent shape already or worth refinishing, I’d certainly buy them.
If you have a Lowes handy, check out their unfinished, unassembled stuff. We paid about $250 for a solid oak armoire and nighstand, and spent another $20 or so finishing them. If we’d bought that kind of stuff at a furniture store premade, it would have been more like $1000. We finished them exactly how we wanted them, and put them together ourselves so we know they’re solid as a rock.
As for picking things out, remember that stains look different on different types of wood. Sand everything you can get to till it’s smooth as a baby’s ass, then sand it some more. Wood conditioners and stuff aren’t really necessary, IMO, but some people like them. Personally, I’ve found that the easiest way to get even coverage is to apply the stain with an old sock, rather than a brush, but you do tend to have nasty-looking fingers afterward with that method.
Eva, where are you getting them? I would recommend 57th St. Bookcases if you haven’t priced them yet. THey are fantastic quality and very reasonable.
I heartily recommend getting a piece of wood and trying it out. However don’t just go to the Borg and pick out a pine 2x4. Ask the makers for a scrap so you are practicing on the same surface you will be finishing, esp. the sanding level.
I used the Minwax Satin finish one-step polyurethane stain/sealer on a floor-to-ceiling set of bookcases we made out of pine, and I loved the process and the results. I do want to emphasize again that you’ll need to be very diligent in your preparation - sand until you think you can’t get it any smoother and then sand one more time. Be sure there’s no sawdust anywhere, and I’d suggest doing the actual staining outside or in an extremely well-ventilated spot. I made myself very sick staining built-in uprights inside the house.
If you don’t have one, it might be worthwhile to invest in a small belt sander. I never regretted buying mine, especially after sanding 27 shelves and the framework they’re set in.
I’ve bought my bookcase from Lundia (like IKEA, but slightly more up-scale), which AFAIK is made from pine (very light colored wood). I used a mahogany stain (of alkyd resin), which resulted in a nice dark color, slightly more reddish than cherry. I didn’t do much about sanding since I’m too lazy for that, but did manage to get a proper result.
Kind of stain: there is water-base and turpentine-based. I did use the latter, but you need to vent very well when you are doing it and letting the wood dry: you don’t want to inhale the fumes. If you will be doing it in your living while you live there, better would be water-base. I have heard, though, that turpentine-based would give a better (more even) result.
Stain has to be applied at least twice. Better use three layers (I did). You can try two layers, and if you still don’t like the result, add a third one. Sand lightly (with light sandpaper) after applying and drying each layer. Take off the sawdust with a cloth (I’ve heard panty-hose works real well, too). Sanding apparently is necessary to get a very even result. To tell the truth, I did sand but very lightly and lazily. Maybe that’s why I had to wax it in the end, dunno.
After that I added a lacquer finish, in effect a colorless stain, to protect the colored layers (don’t know whether that really is necessary). I hoped it would lead to a more even result, so I sanded beforehand as well.
The result was still slighty grainy. You couldn’t see it, but if you stroked the wood with your fingertips you could definitely feel it. I didn’t like that grainy feeling. So I ended up applying a wax finish: use furniture wax, apply a dab of it on the wood, and spread it out with steel wool, then let it dry. The result was very smooth. Wax smells nice, too.
I’m happy with the result, but I must warn you that it takes quite a lot of work. All those wooden boards have a lot of surface. Having the boards dry takes a lot of space, too. I didn’t have to do the left and right sides of the boards that are invisible because of the supports, so once I stained the boards I let them rest on these sides. Best is to finish the whole bunch in a couple of days: each day staining the whole lot (or the fraction that you can do), letting it dry overnight and doing the second layer the day after, and so on. If you want, you can wait with waxing after you have set up the cabinet, though. Then you can see whether you only want to wax the sides that you are likely to touch.
Note: I am not very handy, so maybe real experts are saying you should be more careful and attentive than I was. But I do like the end result. It is nice to look at the cabinet, knowing you made it look like it does.
There is nothing wrong with wanting pine furniture. It’s your choice as to how you want to decorate your place. Wood finishing is a very passionate topic for people. There are no necessary right or wrong answers.
It’s hard to get pine to stain evenly. It blotches pretty badly. Some parts of the wood absorb the stain more heavily than others. You need to minimize this. That is what wood conditioner is for. First off, if you are assembling the shelves yourself and using glue, you should wipe them dowm with mineral spirits (turpentine same thing pretty much). This will highlight the spots where you have glue on the wood that you tried to wipe off and missed. Stain will not absorb into the glue and will really show up when finished.
You don’t have to kill yourself sanding. 220 grit is plenty. You can rub forever, but unless you use a finer grit, it really won’t get any smoother. On the end grain (literally the end of a board), you might want to go a step finer with the sanding. End grain absorbs more stain. Finer sanding will help close the pores…again minimizing color difference.
Now you are ready to stain and finish. To stain pine as evenly as possible, wet the surface with wood conditioner and then use a GEL STAIN. Gel stain is more solid than what you may be used to and will not absorb as quickly in the soft wood. Apply the conditioner and stain according to instructions on the cans. You can stain 1 coat, 2 coats, 3 coats…it’s not a huge deal. The color variation will be subtle at best. Stop when you like how it looks. If you are blotchy, applying more coats won’t help.
Last is finishing. Polyurethane is probably the finish of choice for a high use item. Tung oil is nice to look at and easy to apply, but won’t hold up well. Lacquer is hard to apply without equipment. Shellac would work well. I would recommend satin finish poly for you. Gloss (to me) is a bit ugly…but again, it is your furniture, not mine. You can use water or oil based. Oil based smells, water is harder to apply… more work. I’d use oil if I could. I mix the first coat with some thinner in a can about 50/50 and apply it with a brush. After it dries, as others have said, lightly sand it by hand. If you use a belt sander on pine, you are gonna have a mess. Pine is soft and a belt sander VERY aggressive. You’ll sand grooves in the wood. It’s acceptable to use a random orbit sander if you are easy. Follow up with undiluted coats of poly, sanding between each to remove dust nibs until you are happy. One last thought on the poly…It’ s probably gonna run on vertical sections. Try to keep pieces horizontal and watch for drips over the edge.
You can use a one step stain/poly combo. I’ve used them and like how much faster they are. I do a lot of baseboard molding with it. You can try it on a test piece. I’m not sure how bad it blotches. You might get good results but you’ll have to try a test piece. I wouldn’t dilute this stuff. Just brush it on and sand until happy
Thanks, guys! I’m not making my mind up just yet; I think about it for a bit, at least until my livingroom is cleared out enough that I have somewhere to put the darn things. I’m not going to work on them in the livingroom, though; asthmatics and chemical fumes are a bad enough combination as it is, so I’m going to work on the back porch. (Plus I won’t get stain on my nice hardwood floors by accident.)
And BTW, these shelves will come already assemled, with nice toungue-in-groove construction. No little plastic peg shelf supports for me! Solid wood backs, the whole nine yards. Real grownup furniture!
