Stain and topcoat suggestions

[ADAM GROSS]

We will be building a house soon and have decided that most of the trim in the house will be stained rather than painted. My question is I was looking for suggestions/ideas on a finish for poplar. We used poplar on our last house and were happy with it. We are going to be doing a fair amount of buildup trim in keeping with the mission/craftsman style. The stain we used before was quite dark and we're trying to stay away from that. I built a hall tree a while ago from reclaimed hickory and we love the color and richness of the piece. However using the same stain on the poplar resulted in a cool(feeling) finish. We have been able to come close to the same general color but it just doesn't have the warmth of the hickory. I know this is from the wood and I may not be able to match that on the poplar. Back to my question. I'm looking for a color that has the warmth red/brown of the mission/craftsman style on poplar. With doing a house full of trim I need a finish that isn't to time consuming also. I tried a dye but the poplars grain did not play nice with the dye in my eyes. I also have used amber shellac but that turns out to be to orange on the poplar. I may change my choice in woods but we don't necessarly like the strong cathedral grain of plainsawn oak. We would love to do more of a riftsawn oak but price does play a factor and the poplar is a way to do the amount of trim we would like on our budget. Thanks for any suggestions you guys may have.

[Scott Holmes]

You will get better results using dye instead of pigment stain. Poplar is a diffuse porous wood and thus it tends to get blotchy with pigment stains.

[Mel Fulks]

Don't know current price of red oak ,but two years ago in this area it was down close to the price of poplar.A key point here is the "built up " description .Don't get quotes based on lists of the pieces. Get quotes based on the profiles as they will be nailed up. Make it clear that defects that will be covered by another piece are ok ,make it clear that the wood is to be used in all cases to maximize the quarter sawn and rift grain look. Don't list a 16 foot pc. When what you need is two 8 foot pcs. Don't scare your builder or sub by making a lot of changes to your order after you have submitted it for quote.If you are willing to take the time to carefully specify all needed information the cheapest way to get the look you want is to use the oak.

[Scott Holmes]

Mel makes a good point... another thing to remember is you want to make sure the builder knows you want "stain grade" trim.

[ADAM GROSS]

I have already estimated and priced out the materials for the house and the cost has been worked into the price of the house. As far as finishishing (painting and staining) and trimming out the house we will be doing that. We did our last house and it seem to be a good way to save money plus the job will be up to my standards and not some production builders standards. I tried using some dye on test piece of poplar and wasn't real crazy about it. We have a parade of homes here the beginning of summer and we toured some of the houses and talked to the builders and it suprised we no one uses stained trim anymore. Builders ranging from low end to high end basically used the same profiles and it was that preprimed mdf. Cheaper for the builder its already primed and easy to use. Seems to be a trend around here the last couple of years.

[Mel Fulks]

It IS a current trend . That is working in your favor now,take advantage of it. Oak had a good long run in cabinets and trim and is now less popular. I suspect that the characteristics of oak have not changed and know that prices do. I have worked on projects where all the mouldings were spect out to be clear lumber,then when the job was finished noticed that a lot of the area of some pcs were covered by other pcs. Using materials in an efficient way is not accepting inferior stuff. Asking someone to make sure the finer grained edge of aboard is the one that is moulded is not an imposition; nor is asking them to put the best pcs in the parlors instead of the closets. Good luck.

[Prashun Patel]

If you are not crazy about dyes (which take some practice to get used to) you might consider a gel stain. Gel stains sit closer to the surface of the wood, and tend to go on more like paint than stain. This will result in less blotch. If you haven't stained poplar before, I'd do a long test board. Pigment stain blotch on poplar can be hard to detect in small swatches (DAMHIKT).

Alternatively, you can pre-seal your wood with a very light cut of shellac. This will impede the stain's ability to achieve full depth of color, but will result in a more even tone.