Q: I bought a new red oak exterior door, sanded it, applied Varathane wood conditioner and after 20 minutes, applied Varathane Gunstock stain. I didn’t wipe it off because I liked the color. I let it dry for 12 hours, took my finger and rubbed it in a couple of spots and there was no stain on my finger and it felt dry, and was not sticky. I applied Minwax Polyurethane Satin top coat. When it dried I noticed about a dozen spots where it looked like the stain came off. Can I fix this without sanding the whole door and starting over?
A: You can certainly fix it without sanding, but probably not without removing the finish, which you can do with paint remover instead of sanding. Let’s first go back and recap what went wrong so you are not tempted to repeat the same mistakes.
First, wood conditioner is used on certain woods prior to staining to make them absorb stain more evenly. Some woods, such as red oak, do not ever need wood conditioner. You should have used stain alone on the raw wood. For the record, the proper way to use wood conditioner is to flood it on liberally, wipe it all off, then stain while the wood is still wet with the conditioner.
Stain should be applied the same way; flood it on, and wipe it off leaving only what the wood is able to absorb. Most liquid stains do not contain enough binder in them to form a contiguous film, so applying a ‘coat’ of stain as if it were paint will generally cause delamination at some point down the road. Yours happened quickly, but it was a disaster waiting to happen in any case, and odds are good more problems will arise in the future. If you want to paint stain on in layers, you must use tinted topcoat, a combination of pigment and clear finish. Several companies sell that in lacquer and polyurethane formats.
Although you probably don’t want to hear this, you should remove the finish completely and start over, this time avoiding the pitfalls from the first time around.
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