Best Ideas to Finish a Bathroom Vanity in Red Oak

[Thrift Diving]

Hey, everyone! I made this bathroom vanity, my first big build, but now I'm stuck on the finishing. I can't for the life of me figure out how I'd like to finish it! I want my bathroom vanity to NOT look like dated 1980's oak, but many of the finishing options would make it look that way. I want to keep it as natural as possible. Something light. Perhaps cerise did oak that uses white wax to highlight and lighten the grain. But I can't decide. Any suggestions?? P.S. The pulls will be black.

[Leon]

If you built it out of oak, it's going to look like oak, pick you decade. Most modern cabinets these days are being built with a wood with out an open grain. They are then stained or painted.

Short of filling the grain and painting I am not sure how you are going to avoid the oak look.

[Puckdropper]

Leon wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I think the key word there was "dated". The best way to keep it from being dated is to make it an introvert, tell it that talking to strangers is bad, and give it an irrational fear of beards. Fellows, please lay off the beards. The evil man isn't the one with the beard, but the guy with the carefully groomed appearance so that he projects just what he wants you to see.

ANYWAY......

Have you considered just going with sanding and a clear or slightly tinted finish? Some wood looks fantastic sanded up to 400 or even 1000 grit then finished simply with a coat of wax or shellac. You're refining the wood so it looks its best (oh, I didn't expect a tie-in here), which is kinda like taking a shower and trimming your beard before a date. Coating it with "Golden Oak" stain and finish is that carefully groomed appearance I mentioned.

Puckdropper

[Sonny]

I suppose you have some leftover scrap, from the build. Use those to test some applications.

One option: Apply one or two thinned coats of shellac, to fill the grain/pores, then apply something like (semi-gloss?) Varathane floor finish.

Sonny

[G. Ross]

Didn't they have something a couple of decades earlier called "Limed Oak"? It looked OK at the time.

[-MIKE-]

Everything Leon said... plus.... If you have any scrap oak left do some experimentation with finishes including dyes and paints, maybe milk paints.

The only way to make that not look like 80s golden oak is to do some sort of distressed painted thing with it.

If you don't want to paint it, look at doing an extreme contrast in the grain with dyes. I did something with oak once where I used a black dye in the grain. You apply a ton of dye and really push it into the grain, then you *flat* sand it off the top, leaving the dye in the grain. Then finish the top. The dye in the grain can be any color.

[krw]

White paint. ;-)

[-MIKE-]

I found a picture of an oak drum I made using the "dye push" technique I wrote about.