Staining options

[Smasht]

Hello everyone,

Just removed built in bunk beds from a wood paneled bedroom. Everything was obviously varnished in situ, so there's now paler raw pine showing which has also got a lot of varnish drips (that acted like glue during the bed removal)

I'm looking for options from the forum as to how to fix it up, preferably without having to sand the entire wall!

Issues I see are an unknown varnish which may he hard to match (the house is 1983, so probably not many different finishes in those days), obviously varnish won't be enough as the paler wood would still show, so now I'm up for staining a tiny bit of each plank or sanding every plank that's been impacted back to raw, and that's back to effectively sanding the whole wall

Any ideas?

 

 

[Jason]

Welcome to Workshop @Smasht. It's great that you have joined us. I hope our community members have some great advice for this project and others you might tackle in future. Please let me know if you ever need a hand getting the most from the site.

Jason

[Isobel]

Have you considered painting the timber @Smasht?

It can look fantastic. 

[MartyH]

Tricky one. I wouldn't think you'd have any chance of matching the stained timber. You would need to sand it all back to get a uniform appearance. 

[Stephen-H]

Hi @Smasht
Being a 1983 build it would most likely be a turps based polyurethane and by the looks of the picture it doesn’t looked ‘stained’, just polyed.
The main problem is that pine under poly ages and goes a rich golden colour, so just painting those areas with poly won’t cover it up and sanding would be out of the question.
On the other hand if it is water based clear, for some reason the pine does not seem to age as much, you may be in luck.
I would suggest getting a scrap piece of lining board and if you can paint half of it with clear poly and the other half with water based poly. Then wait for it to dry anc compair. You may be able to talk to Bunnings for help. You only need half a brush full of each

[Smasht]

Actually I hadn't thought about that. The room has a very 'wood' theme going that we'd like to keep, but if too hard painting may be an option. Thanks for your idea 

[Smasht]

@Stephen-H, thanks for your details comments, I'll try the finish samples, and see if anything matches

BTW, why do you say "and sanding would be out of the question", dust from old poly finishes dangerous?

Cheers

[Isobel]

@Smasht

I assume the bunks were only attached to one or two walls? You could paint those walls and leave one as the bare timber as a feature wall.

[Stephen-H]

@Smasht, I say that because it would be a real chore to sand back to clear wood and the V joins are a real mongeral to clean up.

[Smasht]

@Stephen-H.... Yep you're right the grooves will be a pain. As there's been no easy answer I'm going to try various techniques on sections and see if anything is passable. 

I will post results of these tests in a few weeks