Color Touch Painting recently met a Dublin, California homeowner who wanted to change the appearance of their natural wood handrails. The handrails were a light maple color and the clients wanted darker stained look.
Our challenge in staining the interior railing color from natural to dark was that the wood had already been sealed with a clear-coat. Therefore, staining it darker without completely stripping the rails was out of the question. Other options included using either a gel-stain or a polyurestain (polyurethane and stain in one). Gel-stains are made to color already sealed surfaces and even fiberglass. However, from years of experience providing painting services, we have found that it is easy to leave variations in color density and “rag-marks”. The polyurestain takes multiple coats and several hours for each coat to dry. Therefore, several coats would require several days! Also, a strong stain odor would linger for a prolonged period of time.
Mohawk Lacquer
We decided to go with a Mohawk Lacquer (Finisher’s choice) with a cherry dye stain added to impart color. Lacquer has several advantages – for one, it dries very quickly, so multiple coats could be sprayed within a couple of days, slowly building up the density of color to the desired tone. In addition, overspray is minimal requiring minimizing any mess. Nevertheless, we really had to contain the area to limit the spread of dust and we did an extensive job of masking!
Since we did not know what the original clear coating on natural wood handrails was, we started with a universal sealer, to ensure compatibility (not all clear-coats are compatible with each other). Then, 6-7 coats of stained lacquer using an air-assisted sprayer and a fine (208) tip.
Masking of interior handrails before spraying.
Clear coated wood handrail prior to re-staining with dark lacquer.
Tinted Mohawk lacquer samples.
Dark stairway handrails after staining with Mohawk tinted lacquer
