Wood stain question

[momopi]

For those who are experienced with wood stains & wood work, I need some advice on the following:

1.  I need to spot-repair a chest table that sustained damage to the surface from nail polish remover.  Since this is a chest, the surface is not "flat" and has many wood and metal pieces.  I can sand down the damaged area in a square but will not sand down the entire chest.  The color is dark walnut and the wood appears to be "dense" and difficult to retain wood stain.

2.  I need advice on how to best match the staining color without resurfacing the chest, and the color needs to match as closely as possible under 2 different lighting conditions:  natural sunlight from large window nearby, and indoor fluorescent lamp.  That is, the repaired area should color match under both light conditions.

3.  Since the damaged area has already been sanded, using patchwork products like Old English oil or Restore-A-Finish is probably no longer the option.  Nor do I have a spare piece of matching wood to test on.  I've tested both water based and oil based stains on the actual chest and both do not retain sufficient color after 2-3 coats.


I've called professional furniture restoration companies and the ones who are confident enough to work on it under above conditions wanted $500-$700 to perform the spot repair.  I suspect that they might use custom paint or wood dye instead of wood stain.  The chest itself is worth less than $500 to replace, but it's custom adjusted for uneven floor so that the top will slide and close evenly.

 

[socal78]

I'm sorry this happened to you. I could have written this post myself. The exact same thing happened to me earlier this week!! It's my BRAND NEW coffee table.  I am so mad at myself for letting this happen. Two repair people I checked with said they wouldn't even touch it.  They don't want to deal with anything where the wood has absorbed any chemical since they don't know how far down it goes and if the repair will "make it worse" (I don't know how it could look any worse).  ??? I'm glad you posted the cost because I was curious but I couldn't even get that far. Same here, it would cost less to buy a new table than to have them fix this one. And yeah, I bought an additional warranty plan on it - doesn't matter. I plan on fixing it myself, too.

 

[momopi]

My chest has an uneven surface on top and sides, and does not have drawers.  It has been custom adjusted specifically for my uneven floor so that the top will side open and close exactly.  The damage area is a "square" on the top surface and I just need to sand it down and get it to color match as closely as possible under 2 light conditions (daylight and indoor light) in the same room.  So far I've tried a few different stain products and found that the new water based products are worthless, and only the older oil based stains that are no longer stocked at Lowes or Home Depo due to CA regulation works with multiple coats.  Still, I have trouble with color match or finding any other spot on the chest to test.  I could flip it over and sand down an area on the bottom to test, but I donno if it's the same wood.  This is one of those designer furniture with uneven surface design and it's possible that different types of wood are used in the design.

SoCal, if you're planning to strip your coffee table and re-stain it, I have the chemical stripper, steel wool, sandpaper, sanding pad/sponge, and couple cans of dark walnut type stains if you want to try them.

 

[socal78]

That's so nice. Thank you for the kind offer, Momo! Fortunately, I have all the goodies already from my other hobby projects. Hopefully, I can get away with a small fix. We'll see how it goes.