Using Wood Stain + Kitchen Update

This week I have a bunch of projects to show you that I’ve finally checked off my house to do list. You know all those little things you never get done? I finally finished some of them, including a kitchen update. Plus we have a new rug in the living room {just after I showed you a tour and thought the room was mostly finished} and I’m making some final touches on the upstairs bathroom renovation. The kitchen update involved using wood stain, let me show you what I did.

We have an island in the middle of our kitchen, that recently got a matching granite counter top. It previously had a laminate piece on it and I hated how it didn’t match the rest of the room, so I luckily found a remnant and now all of our counters match. A little quirk of mine, but I wanted to room to look connected. Inside the island is a cabinet for appliances and also some shelves. Since we moved in the shelves were raw wood and got pretty dirty, with the microwave being there. I wanted to seal the wood somehow so we could clean them easily, and contemplated how to do it.

First I thought about paint but decided against it. It’s been really humid here and I was afraid the paint wouldn’t cure well, or would eventually flake off. Then I thought about stain and a coat of poly to seal the shelves. This would work perfectly since the wood had not been stained or painted at all and would definitely be able to take a beating with use of the cutting boards. On the bottom shelf we keep a wine crate with cleaning supplies.

See raw wood, lots of dirt, much in need of an update.

Using wood stain is very easy and requires just a few supplies. I really like to work with it, not to mention you can have stain tinted to many different colors – did you know that? So it makes for a fun and useful colorant.

The first thing you’ll need is a sponge brush. I use these since they hold the stain well, it’s pretty liquid-y. The sponge brush helps absorb the stain and push it onto the wood. After I wiped down the shelves of debris, I went to work brushing on the stain. For this project I used Minwax’s wood stain in ebony, which is their black. I’ve used it before on end tables and other furniture.

I actually ended up staining the back too, although it doesn’t look like it in this picture.

When using wood stain, gloves are a must. I use the thin latex ones, they keep your hands clean, and you don’t want to go to the grocery store with stained hands right? I don’t think it’s very in this season.

After you brush on the stain, you’ll wait about 5-10 minutes for the stain to soak into the wood. The longer you wait, the darker the wood will be, based on your color and the more stain it will take in. You just use an old rag to wipe the stain off. This is where the gloves really work. I use an old t-shirt since the fabric isn’t pilly and won’t end up on my shelves.

Here were the shelves after one coat of stain. It goes on pretty dark, but it’s amazing how much will wipe off with the rag. You must wipe off the excess stain with a rag, do not skip this step! Otherwise the coats won’t dry and once you go to put the poly on, it will dry a foggy grey haze and you’d have to do your project over. Ask me how I know 🙂

Since I wanted the shelves to be darker than this, I added another coat of stain. Sometimes for black, I’ve added up to 4 coats of stain before I get the color I want. But that’s the fun with it, you can kind of play around a little and it’s neat to see the colors you can get. I waited about 2 hours in between coats of stain since it has to dry, then after the last coat was dry, I put on 2 coats of polycyclic on top. I use a water based poly, which you can do over oil based stain. I gave the bottom shelves 3 coats of poly so they would stand up to wear and tear.

Here are the shelves all finished. I love the way they came out. They hide the microwave more, but also make the wine crate stand out. Who keeps their cleaning supplies in a wine crate? We do.

Plus they match the granite counter tops, which is a color called sapphire blue.

Have you ever used wood stain? Think you would try it?