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    Emily Fazio

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Is This Distressed To You?

November 14, 2012

We’ve been working feverishly to finish building a set of farmhouse style tables for our wedding reception while it’s still bearable to construct things on our deck (saws and drills are notoriously hard to operate while wearing mittens). Here’s a sneak peek of some more progress (and a quick shot of our seemingly oblivious pup):

Cody and the fine legs to our wedding table.

The lumber for these tables has been entirely sourced from local big box stores (we needed some big cahootin’ 2×10-ers, so salvaging scrap lumber from of the basement was a no-go this time around). The thing about old lumber is that it’s rugged, it’s uneven, it’s splintery, and 99.5% of the time, it just looks beautiful, full of character, full of tale and history. It makes my heart thump-thump, and it usually makes my car very dirty, which is OK, since I’m not driving clients or anyone wearing clothing nicer than jeans and sneakers these days. The thing about brand new lumber is that it’s strong and generally smooth, albeit too flawless, blonder than Elle Woods, and planed within an iota of its life, eliminating all sense of raw character or history. Those damn lumberjacks. I don’t have anything about blondes, for the record, I just don’t have a thing for pine lumber, which is ironic since I just bought $150 of it for gigantic wooden wedding tables. I don’t actually have a thing against planed wood either; Pete and I also have our eye set on acquiring our own wood planer one of these days for the sole purpose of being able to restore some of the grimier pieces of reclaimed lumber we’ve sourced. It’ll be a $500 investment to keep us from having to buy mass manufactured lumber from the back fo the second tier of shelving at Lowe’s, wherein I’m bound to get into mischief and inevitably topple the lower level stack of 2×4’s into the aisle. Why hasn’t anyone gotten around to figuring out a better storage method for lumber at these presumably DIY-friendly stores?

I digress. Part of my plan all along was to take these pine boards, all of which are undeniably brand-spankin’ new, and give them a natural distressing. One of the tutorials I came across most often involved staining the wood with apple cider vinegar that a piece of steel wool had soaked in. Best test this situation first with Julia’s bathroom stepstool before I sacrifice one of our new tables.

Testing out vinegar stain on a raw pine step stool.

Here’s now it (allegedly) works: You soak a piece of 100% steel wool in a small vat of vinegar. Word on the blogosphere is that it works best when the container is sealed. The steel actually starts to disintegrate. After 24 hours, remove the steel wool, and apply the tainted vinegar (in which the wool had created an acid oxide) like you would apply a stain. In a short period of time, it should darken the wood noticeably into a transformed state of old ass lookin’ wood. Best thing about this strategy? No horrible oil-stained brushes to clean. Am I right, or am I right?

Well, the unfortunate foreshadowing of most tutorials that I poked through is that, like most stains, different woods respond differently to stain, and with that said, I’m not so sure that pine had the reaction that I was anticipating.

The first coat on the surface looked like this after 5 minutes, a whole bunch of wet nada:

First coat of apple cider vinegar stain on the step stool.

I soaked the steel (and a second brand of finer steel wool) in the vat of vinegar for another night, assuming that it just needed more down time.

After the second rub-down I let it dry fully before photographing the progress. The step stool (and my hands, for the record) smelled like an easter egg dying competition, and the pine only looked like this:

Dried pine after the second coat of vinegar stain.

Unimpressed. Furthermore, micro granules of steel were latching onto the surface, creating little black dots. You can see them a little bit after coat #2, and with even more intensity after coat #3.

Check out the black spots left by my vinegar stain. No good.

Note how one of the edges looked after coat #3. It was noticibly aged, but not really in the way that I expected. Instead of looking like the color of rustic, dry barnwood, it looked like dirty lumber that I store under our moist workbench.

You can see how the vinegar stain worked on the darker areas of this board.

Paired with pine, the apple cider vinegar stain just looked… bad. As shown in this next picture, I really only focused on testing the top of the step stool (and now I wish I had started my test on the underside). It doesn’t even look as nice and evenly aged as our deck boards, which in my opinion are still in fair/un-aged condition. Strange, huh? #bigfatfailure.

The stained step stool is... not that stained.

And so, whether or not this looks appropriately distressed to you, it’s not quite the look I was going for and now I’ll be starting from scratch.

If you have any other tips for an au natural staining success, send them my way.

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Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

9 Comments


Amanda
November 14, 2012 at 9:05 am
Reply

This tutorial talks about adding a black tea step to the process: http://thefriendlyhome.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-to-oxidize-wood.html

If you try it out, let me know how it works! I have been very interested in trying this for a farmhouse table of our own.



    Emily
    November 14, 2012 at 9:33 am

    *I read more of that post, Amanda, it actually does look really good and have to change my response*

    I wonder if her’s turned out so nicely because she let the vinegar sit longer (days!) before infusing the tea and using it on the lumber…. scratching head! Tea is an amazing trick if lack of tannens are really the issue with my pine.

    Thanks for sending it my way!

Barb
November 14, 2012 at 10:00 am
Reply

I’ve had mixed results with the steel wool & vinegar too – usually it looks fantastic on the scrap board UNDER my project, not so much anywhere else.

I’ve been trying something else lately – I wipe on brown stain with a rag so it’s a really thin coat and dries right away, and then with a new cloth I wipe on a coat of watered down paint in a white or taupe or green colour (whatever tint you’re going for). It gives a nice greyish look to the wood. And because you’re wiping on thin coats, you can always add more until you get the depth you like.

Here is my first attempt with it which I think shows it off best:
http://turtlesandtails.blogspot.ca/2011/09/best-dressed-part-two.html

Barb



    Emily
    November 14, 2012 at 10:04 am

    Your 6-drawer dresser turned out so good!! Beautiful! Thanks for the tip!

Shannon
November 14, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Reply

Maybe I’m just totally obsessed with YHL, but they had a pretty good technique for distressing wood. http://www.younghouselove.com/2011/04/making-new-wood-look-old/



    Emily
    November 14, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    Yeah, but physical distressing aside they still just used traditional stain. I should have just made the tables out of light barn wood since that’s the effect we were going for.

Brittany aka Pretty Handy Girl
November 14, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Reply

Emily, I actually just wrote a post about how I aged new pine board to look like the old sunbleached and distressed wood I harvested from shipping pallets. It worked like a charm for me! http://www.prettyhandygirl.com/2012/10/how-to-make-new-wood-look-old-weathered-and-rustic.html



    Emily
    November 16, 2012 at 8:54 am

    I have never heard, or observed the use of sunbleached stain before I saw it on your blog! It actually does amazing things, and I’ve gotta keep that in mind. Super cool and thank you for sharing!!

Brittany aka Pretty Handy Girl
November 14, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Reply

On more post, this one has more painting techniques, but you might get some ideas from it: http://www.prettyhandygirl.com/2010/09/aging-is-so-distressing-techniques-for.html



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