How hard is it to match a stain color on a cabinet?

[PingSpike]

I am modifying my cabinets, replacing a wall oven and microwave combo with a single wall oven and then building a shelf in the resulting hole. I am planning to use out corner moulding to cover the rough. I tried to find some of the prefinished fake stuff to use but the only stuff they make is not large enough measurement and wasn't that great of a match anyway. I'm thinking of just buying some plain pine pieces instead and trying to match the stain.

Can I just take a scrap piece of the pine corner moulding and a piece of the cutout cabinet with finish on it to a paint store or Lowes and expect them to get a pretty close match or am I stuck experimenting myself here? I don't have much experience staining and my last project was a pretty big pain.

Also are there types of stains and sealants I should avoid for wood that is going to be near a wall oven?

 

[zanemoseley]

Wood species, stain and the clear coat you use will all effect the look of the finished piece. I doubt your kitchen cabinets are made from pine so if you start with pine you're already starting out at a disadvantage. Stain can be matched but again the base wood species will vary the finished look to a large degree. Usually if they custom mix stain for you they want you to bring a piece of what its going on so they can test what it will look like when applied, it is not like paint. If you cabinets are of decent quality then they're probably either clear coated with either a sprayed varnish or laquer. Most newbie DIY people will try and use a polyurethane which will not look like what you have in your kitchen most likely. The easiest way to apply a decent top coat if you aren't planning on spraying is to thin the product you are using with mineral spirits 50%/50% and apply with a clean cotton rag, apply 4-6 very thin coats knocking down the dust nibs between every coat or two with fine sand paper.

Good luck!

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, I think the trim I was going to use comes in a couple different wood species but I was planning to bring a scrap piece of it for them to test the stains on.

 

[olds]

Most likely, a lot of trial and error.

 

[Mandres]

Don't use pine. Poplar or alder can be stained or dyed to make a pretty close match for most hardwoods but it will not be perfect. There's a lot of information out there, just do a search and read a lot before you have at it.

 

[Fritzo]

It's VERY hard. I tried to do that with some crown molding...ended up having to mix 4 different stains together, which sucked because stain is expensive.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Very hard trial and error you're not going to get done by anyone at any paint store.

They usually have a sample board next to the cans of stain which shows each stain on oak and maple.

Once you figure out which wood you have, get the closest stain as a base. If it's a match you're done. But if you have to do a custom mix, then you will have to figure out which stains are more brown, red, and orange, and buy the small cans of those as needed. I use a small butter container and teaspoon to measure what I am mixing, but you won't have to do that if it's just a small job. Test the stain on your trim. You stain by flooding the wood using a towel, waiting several minutes, and wipe off the excess. Let dry and check against your cabinets.

 

[UnklSnappy]

Also need to determine if a wiping stain or penetrating stain is more suitable for the color of the cabinet. Wiping stains will give you a more even overall color. Penetrating will make the soft grain stand out more.
Minwax is a penetrating stain, while Zar makes wiping stains.
And don't leave any stain rags in the house. They have a habit of spontaneously combusting. Especially wiping stains.

 

[Jeffg010]

Very hard and like someone said don't use soft woods. The harder the wood like oak the better the staining. I done tons of staining and spraying and it was best to just redo the whole thing unless you have the original stain you used the first time. But even if you know what color was used like golden oak it is still a pain in the ass because it can fade over time and be off color.

 

[Fern]

I am modifying my cabinets, replacing a wall oven and microwave combo with a single wall oven and then building a shelf in the resulting hole. I am planning to use out corner moulding to cover the rough. I tried to find some of the prefinished fake stuff to use but the only stuff they make is not large enough measurement and wasn't that great of a match anyway. I'm thinking of just buying some plain pine pieces instead and trying to match the stain.

That's what I had to do.

Can I just take a scrap piece of the pine corner moulding and a piece of the cutout cabinet with finish on it to a paint store or Lowes and expect them to get a pretty close match or am I stuck experimenting myself here? I don't have much experience staining and my last project was a pretty big pain.

I used the wood from the cabinets themselves to experiment on. I removed the front of the drawers and stained the backside of the drawers until I found a good combination of stains to match. I wanted to use the exact same wood so whatever mix I came up with would look exactly the same on the cabinets.

It took some trial and error. I didn't mix stains per se. Instead I put down coats of stain one after the other until I got a good match. E.g., if after it dried I found it not red enough, or not gold enough etc I would lay down a coat of reddish or goldish stain.

When you're trying to match make sure to lay the (experiment) piece next to the wood you're matching it to in different light, daylight and at night when the lights are on.

Fern

 

[zanemoseley]

BTW don't use poplar either, its notorious for being difficult to stain. Maple is one of the better neutral colored hardwoods to stain and is readily available.

 

[PingSpike]

I guess I'm just going to have to fuck around with it. I have limited types of wood that I'm stuck with for the trim work unless I want to really shop around.

I know its probably not the right type of wood but it appears the trim in my house is stained the same color as the cabinets and the trim is almost certainly pine from my crude estimation. It'd be nice if I could figure out the stain on pine anyway because I've got some beat up floor moulding pieces that could stand to be replaced as well so at least if I got it figured out I'd have more than just this one use. At any rate they have charts with what the stain looks like on oak and what it looks like on pine. Since I can't find oak trim and everything seems to be pine I think I'll start there.

It doesn't have to be 100% perfect anyway. Looking at the cabinets now it doesn't seem like the coloring is perfect as is. I just never really noticed it before.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

BTW don't use poplar either, its notorious for being difficult to stain. Maple is one of the better neutral colored hardwoods to stain and is readily available.

You use what kind of wood (or at least the closest possible) as what you are matching. If you cabinets are made of cherry, you use cherry, if unavailable, poplar is the best fake cherry on the planet. You and the guy that said use this type of wood because of it's staining properties (which he was wrong about) don't get it.

 

[Humpy]

You use what kind of wood (or at least the closest possible) as what you are matching. If you cabinets are made of cherry, you use cherry, if unavailable, poplar is the best fake cherry on the planet. You and the guy that said use this type of wood because of it's staining properties (which he was wrong about) don't get it.

Are you sure you don't mean alder?

Poplar is a paint grade material in my world. It's pretty soft, inconsistent white-green-brown coloring, and unstable-ish. Red Alder, AKA 'poor man's cherry', is pretty much the same hardness as cherry, similar color, and about the same stability as cherry.

I consider poplar and maple more difficult to stain, but with wash coats and toning one can make pretty much any wood look like another.

Cherry:

Alder:

Poplar:

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Are you sure you don't mean alder?

Poplar is a paint grade material in my world. It's pretty soft, inconsistent white-green-brown coloring, and unstable-ish. Red Alder, AKA 'poor man's cherry', is pretty much the same hardness as cherry, similar color, and about the same stability as cherry.

I consider poplar more difficult to stain, but with wash coats and toning one can make pretty much any wood look like another.

Cherry:

Alder:

Poplar:

No, I mean poplar. Yes, it's normally used for painted parts of cabinets that need to be wood, or for structural reinforcement where MDF won't work, but it also has a similar grain to and density as cherry. Most fake cherry stuff is made out of poplar. It's horrible to work with but it's 10x less expensive in bulk.

Red Alder is softer and more porous.

Also poplar:

 

[Humpy]

No, I mean poplar. Yes, it's normally used for painted parts of cabinets that need to be wood, or for structural reinforcement where MDF won't work, but it also has a similar grain to and density as cherry. Most fake cherry stuff is made out of poplar. It's horrible to work with but it's 10x less expensive in bulk.

Red Alder is softer and more porous.

Also poplar:

Is today "make shit up and post it on ATOT day" and no one told me? :biggrin:

Alder has a Janka hardness of 590, poplar is 540, essentially the same. Cherry is in the 900's, the 1500's like hard maple is where it starts to truly become 'hard wood' IMO. I don't know what 'more porous' means or how it is defined with regards to lumber.


So, to you that poplar looks more like cherry than the alder does? I'd have to disagree.

 

[herm0016]

IMHO, poplars grain structure is more similar to cherry, most people can not tell the difference between a nice white poplar with a cherry stain, and cherry with the same. Alder's grain pattern is more akin to ash or oak.

We used to sell a lot of nice, white, poplar doors to people matching their cherry trim, and they were usually nearly indistinguishable after finishing. This saved them lots of $$$.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

I don't know anything about alder, cherry, poplar, or cocabolo for that matter except what my experience working with them has been.

I have matched cherry with poplar and finish and I used it because the grain was similar. The color was drowned in stain anyway. Could I match natural cherry with another species, probably not. I've worked with alder once, and don't notice it much even at specialty lumber yards where they have far more than the standard pine, oak, walnut, cherry, maple, and poplar. My recollection is shady at best, but I thought I recalled it being fairly soft (for a hard wood), porous wood that didn't work well.

It was only my point to refute something someone said about this wood or that will work better for matching, when they don't even know what wood he is matching, nor does he. In saying so, I said that if it turns out to be cherry, he can get or make poplar molding and match the cherry with that. Cherry is one of the most expensive woods to work with because it's so temperamental. It's photo-sensitive, and it burns super easily from milling. You can even burn it just sanding it. So it's not the most expensive domestic hardwood, but it is the most expensive to build anything out of. Perhaps I should have just left it at the grain is similar enough that if you use a dark stain on you can make it look like cherry with a dark stain?