In every project there is always that “Oh, crap!” moment. Our “Crappity, crap, crap” moment is almost unbelievable. The stain color has faded, wait for it…AFTER the wood has been sealed with varnish. Several coats of varnish. It gets even better…A FEW WEEKS after the wood had been stained and sealed. “Oh, crap!” indeed.
We are just scratching our heads (it’s better then beating our heads against the wall) wondering how this happened? It wasn’t a slow, gradual fade. One day the stain color was dark and rich, the next day it wasn’t. We went to bed to dark woodwork and a project that was almost completed. The next morning we awoke to woodwork that looks faded out and a project that refuses to end. What cruel joke is this?
The only thing we can think of is that the wood has absorbed the stain…? Because the wood was dry? Because the wood was originally painted? Because we didn’t condition the wood prior to staining? Because someone in this house has really bad karma? All of the above?
Now, what to do about it?
1) Tried putting a little stain over the varnish, knowing that wouldn’t work, but hoping against hope it would. It didn’t.
2) Know that the “right thing” to do is to sand off the layers of varnish from all the woodwork and restain. I think about the amount of time and mess this would cause, after the amount of mess and work it took to even get to this point, and decide stabbing myself in the eye with a fork seems more appealing.
3) We are going to try to tint the varnish with a little stain color and have Pablo spray it on the woodwork.
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November 28th, 2006 - 5:37 am
Wow, I’ve never seen that happen before. That’s too bad and too weird too. Too many too’s.
December 25th, 2006 - 3:50 pm
Wow. I recall you have a particular staining “recipe” you’ve developed for the bare fir and stick with. Remind us readers what that formula is…
I’m also wondering if that area is exposed to sunlight during the day. Various and sundry stain products do or don’t have UV resitance formulated into the mix.
Happy Holidays,
Willy & Sara
December 25th, 2006 - 5:03 pm
Hi! No, the area really isn’t exposed to much sunlight. We still aren’t sure of what happened?
here is a link to the page with our stain formula:
http://www.1912bungalow.com/archives/2004/02/removing_paint.php
December 27th, 2006 - 3:58 pm
Maybe the remaining wood bleach did the work???
December 27th, 2006 - 4:52 pm
We actually didn’t bleach the upstairs woodwork. We used bleach downstairs to get an even finish before applying the stain becuase the wood downstairs had originally been stained a very dark brown/black color. The upstairs had been originally painted, so we skipped the bleaching step.
Go figure, huh? It is so strange that this happened. If anyone has other thoughts please post them here. We’d really LOVE to figure out why/how this happened.