Practice Attempt #2

For my next practice session, I decided to try out another method suggested by other bloggers, the "sponge brush method".  I had originally intended to remove another plank of honey oak wood from one of the spare cabinets, but after several attempts to remove a fake front or a door without success (dh had already gone to bed) I gave up and plopped down with my can of stain right in front of the cabinet on the kitchen floor.  Fortunately, the stain held up to its no-drip reputation.

Again after cleaning and sanding and wiping, I proceeded to brush on some walnut stain with a foam brush.  It seemed that the stain went on thicker with the brush, and I was getting more streaks than before.  It was easier to get into the crevices of the door front, but to get off all the stain I ended up having to wipe it anyway.  To me, the color didn't look much different than it had in Practice Attempt #1, which made sense since the final step was to wipe, the same as I had before.

Several bloggers had mentioned that the color gets better after two or three coats, so the next day, I came back again with a fresh sponge brush and went for a second coat.  I didn't want to wipe it off again, because I felt it would still be the same method as Attempt #1, and this time I was supposed to be testing out the "brush method:", so I applied the second coat with the sponge brush as thin and evenly as I could, didn't wipe, then backed up to take a look.  In short, it literally looked like $#!+.  Very streaky.

I knew I had to do something different.  Since the cabinet seemed ruined at this point, and because the results were already so bad, it really didn't matter what I tried next, so I split my approach into two new strategies..

On the top part, I decided to see if I could remove color, just in case I needed to do so later on an actual cabinet in my home.  I figured that if the stain was removing itself before, that would be the easiest way to remove stain this time.  I took some steel wool, dipped it into the stain, and proceeded to scrub the existing stain on the fake drawer front.  It worked, the color came right off, and I was almost back to the original color.  Whew!  So at least now I knew I could fix mistakes.

On the bottom I took a different approach.  Several bloggers had said that their first and second coats of stain looked terrible, but if you just keep going it looks great.  Okay, I thought, I will give it a try.  I applied a third coat with the sponge brush as evenly as I could.  Again, some of the color was pulling up, some was going on thicker.  At this point it looked like my eleven year old had done it.  I remembered then that this stain is really just polyurethane with paint added in.  The cabinet was beginning to look painted, and badly painted at that.  I think that's why so many people opt for the java stain, and go for several coats...they are essentially painting their cupboards and going with enough layers to get a solid color.  But that is not the look I want.  I kept going, but in the end, it still looked like $#!+.