Well, as promised in yesterday’s post, I’m ready to share about my Sunday project that flopped. Oh joy…

Remember how I have been working on slowly fixing up my nightstand(salvaged from my great-grandparents’ house, which burned a few years ago)?

To refresh, there are posts about it here, here, and here. 

Well, I wanted to stain the top surface, which I left unpainted to show the damage from the fire and smoke, to match our new dressers.

So, on Sunday, I set up shop in our basement storage room and got to work.

 

I wiped the surface clean to remove any dust, but the stain just didn’t stick…like at all.

So, I carried the nightstand back upstairs and out to the garage, where I went after it with the palm sander.

Now, to clarify, the reason I didn’t sand it in the first place was because I wanted to preserve the ask marks from the fire, which I knew sanding would remove.

Still, I sanded it pretty thoroughly, both by hand and with the sander, which did remove a lot of the black ash, but I figured it would be worth it to get the top to that darker wood tone I was going for.

So, I took it back downstairs, wiped all the dust off again and restained…

…only nothing happened, again. After I wiped it, off, of course. It looked so pretty and dark while the stain was sitting on the surface…

Well, not nothing, it did get darker around the edges, and in some cuts and scratched on the surface, as well as around the edge of the veneer that was still left on the top.

But not on the actual light part I was hoping to stain. Dangit.

Hubs says it’s because it’s made with some sort of pressed wood that has a lot of glue in it, and stain won’t stick to glue.

It’s still cool, but I’m a little sad I lost a lot of the ash…although it’s maybe better for our lungs this way, and it is still “uniquely damaged,” which I like because it tells its story that way.

We do maybe have a Plan C, which is to see if we can find a tinted glaze or “clear” coat to go over the top of it…but depending on the price, I may decide to just seal it with the varnish we already have and be done with it.

What do you think? Advice or suggestions? Ever had a project that flopped? How did you drop back and punt? (As my dad would say…)