I have to first start by confessing to a problem I have. Last week, I realized I have PDD or Project Deficit Disorder. I find it extremely difficult to work on one project at a time. And now that I have so many unfinished projects waiting to be completed, my PDD is at an all time high. Through it all though, somehow, I am feeling very productive, working on a few projects simultaneously.

Mr DIY started building a bed for No. 2 son about 3 years. He didn’t like the way it came out; ahe joints weren’t up to his expectations and he wanted to chuck it and start over. He even attempted to stain it and, well let’s just say, that didn’t help matters any. So it sat and sat in the basement, then the garage. I decided to make lemonaide out of lemons, work some DIY magic and rework the design since perfection is truly overrated and the bed is solid and very sturdy.

I started by removing the Colonial Maple finish. I have worked with a lot of stain hues, but I don’t quite understand Colonial Maple. It could be me, but the orange tint is unattractive. I have tried it on various types of wood and it have never had good results.

Here is what it looked liked before:

and after sanding:

It still had an orange sheen that would not go away. I even tried to bleach it out and had no luck.

Next, I applied a dark stain with the hopes that the orange color would disappear. No luck, the orange hue continued to stand its ground and was visible just enough to annoy me. So I turned to paint. I watered down some chocolate brown latex paint I had lefteover from another project. I brushed it on and the orange hue was gone, with the wood grain was still visible, resulting in a stained appearance. I did add some streaks of watered down black acrylic paint to further enhance the wood grain. This is what it looks like now:

I am almost done applying a satin polyurethane finish. Unfortunately, my PDD caused me to have a little mishap, perhaps you can help me with. Multitasking the other day, I forgot to wash out the brush I was using. Does anyone know if it is posible to remove a water based polyurethane from a brush after it has dried? Turpentine, denatured alcohol or mineral spirits perhaps? I invest in good brushes so that I can reuse them and would love to save this one.

Have you ever used paint to create a faux stained finish?

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