On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:26:09 -0500, blueman wrote:

Looking for suggestion for a durable stain grade wood for bathroom
vanity top. The bathroom is shared by 4 kids so it gets a fair bit of
use and abuse, including all the usual soap scum, toothpaste, water
puddles, etc.

For durability, I plan to clear-coat the top (after staining) with
several thin layers of West System Epoxy resin & 207 special coating
hardening.

Since I need to stain the top quite dark to match the existing vanity, I
imagine that the character of the wood is less important than durability
and suitability for the bathroom environment.

My initial thought was to use either cherry or white oak -- and was
leaning towards white oak since it is harder and a little less expensive
though perhaps cherry will be prettier(?).

I'm willing to get a reasonably priced wood since most of the true
"cost" will be my labor, but since it is a kids bathroom and since the
vanity itself is nothing special, I don't want to go crazy on fancy or
exotic species.

Any thoughts?

I'm thinking for a best match you want more than matching color.

What kind of wood are you trying to match? Open pore, like Oak, or
more closed, like Maple?

How is the existing grain? Straight, or not so much?

Cherry might be too soft. It does darken over time. You can get closer
to the final effect by exposing it to sunlight.

What about Walnut? It starts out dark, so darkening the color won't
obscure the grain so much.

Anyway, I'd suggest you get a collection of woods that might work, and
a collection of stains that you can use to find the best match, and
make up samples. Something like Transtint dyes will let you mix and
match more easily than trying to find the right color off the shelf.

Stain your samples and put some type of film finish on any sample that
seems like it might be the one. You could use something like blonde
dewaxed shellac that will dry fast as you are going through various
samples.

And by the way, you can color shellac with dye (as in Transtint) as
one way to apply your stain; and again, you can build layers quickly
since it dries so fast. Handy for testing. Your epoxy coating should
stick to that just fine, I'd think.

You can also put on some shellac to the bare wood, then apply color in
whatever form suits you as a "toner", then apply more shellac over
that. Someone else said it is hard to get maple to take enough stain
to be dark; this is one way to get it as dark as you need it.

The thing about dye; it can fade, especially if exposed to sunlight.

Another option is pigment stain that is oil based. You can add artist
colors to adjust the color match.