Barning.: Coffee Tableau: Part II, or, the Stain

The next step in distressing the wood for the coffee table involved staining it a couple of times. I followed a technique the couple at Young House Love did, but adapted it a little bit. We wanted a brown finish, but first I did a "quick" coat of black stain, to bring out the indents, divots, hollows, holes, crevasses, gullies, caves, and whatever-it-was-that-Yoda-lived-in-on-Dagobah.

To keep the black stain from soaking in too much, you first brush water onto the wood. I got the best results from brushing a good amount of water onto the wood, then immediately slathering on a healthy amount of black stain. I generally left it on somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds, I think-- the fumes kind of made time fade away. Also, the stain I used was really, really old, so you may get different results. The guy at the local hardware store where I bought it told me that this rusty can of stain came over with him from a previous hardware store he owned when he opened the current store 15 years ago. I think he said something about how this stain had "boot black in it, like the old timers use"; I wasn't 100% listening after the whole hardware-store-timeline thing, but he did give me the can for $2.00 so I politely nodded.

After the 60-90 seconds of fume-enhanced reality, I sort of half-heartedly wiped the stain off with a paper towel. I didn't remove all of the stain, since I wanted to leave it in all of the aforementioned Yoda holes. I guess I would say I used the amount of pressure you'd use to give a backrub to a child with a sunburn. Oh, and this is important: don't change out the paper towel. As it soaks up the black stain, it becomes more forgiving and removes just the right amount.

Once the black stain had pretty much dried, I painted on a regular coat of brown (I chose MinWax Colonial Pine, because our house is a colonial-- great simplistic reasoning, huh?) To my relief, it wasn't too dark, and it let the nice black distress stain show through:

The stains on the bottom of the board on the left are from when I opened the can of black stain and it sprayed all over the place, including onto that board; it was very distressing, if you catch my drift.

Here's a side-by-side of a stained board next to a pristine piece of white plywood.