Shelving the shelves...or, Library Part 6

New oak panels to replace the old Birch ones

Wayyyy back in early March of this year, I got bogged down choosing stain colors for the trim in the library I'm building. While I had originally thought I'd have it all finished by sometime in April, here it is going on September, and I've not worked on this much at all in the 5 months or so since.
In the interim, I had decided to solve the staining issues I had been having with the pine and birch I had originally spec'd - splotching, unevenness, and mis-matched coloring - by ditching the birch and pine trim altogether and starting over with oak instead.

Stain tests on the old problematic birch plywood. Even tho' careful sanding and chemical pre-treatment
cut down on the blotchiness, once I switched the edge-face trim to oak, I'd never get this to match...

Of course, I had all the larger trim surrounds for the window, door and window seat already cut and ready to stain in Birch, so switching to oak meant additional purchases, and trimming/fitting all the pieces anew, not to mention now I have all this Birch trim I can't use.
But...
in a fit of motivation, I was able to purchase, remeasure, cut, trim, sand and stain all of the trim surrounds in oak in a single day:

After sanding, the oak faced plywood took the final stain very well with good grain detail

The oak performed as I had hoped - it sanded easily in one step, took the stain well, and in a matter of a few hours I had all the pieces I needed to face the window and door surrounds in the Library. And since the shelf edge-facing will be of the same red oak, they should end up matching exactly.
The remaining steps on these surrounds will be to apply several coats of semi-gloss varnish, lightly sanding with 300 grit between each coat, then glueing/nailing them into place.
I'm still on the fence on whether to rebuild the window seat from scratch in oak, rather than the birch its currently in, but as that's a big expense to rebuild, I'll have to think hard and long on that one. If I leave it in birch, perhaps I'll think about staining or painting it a contrasting color to the oak, rather than trying to match it.
In the meantime, I also have a front tire for the FJR to save up for, as well as a battery for the GB500, and a trip to Italy in the fall...
Seems completing the library may have to wait on the backburner for a little while longer.

Color my World...

Four different stains, four different wood species - what are the odds?

Part 6 of the Library Project...

It only took us a few days to settle on a "white" paint for the bookcases (Behr Antique White #1823). We had planned on staining the trim pieces a contrasting darker color, but this is proving somewhat difficult. As you can see in the photo above, its starting to look like the Vulcan IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).
Turns out I'm learning a lot more about modern (cheap) stains than I care to. Like the fact that the stains offered in the big box stores contain larger pigment particles, which are cheaper to manufacture, but that don't dissolve well into finer grained woods like maple, birch or pine.
I've also learned that some other stains don't absorb into wood fibers well unless there's a primary application of a prep solution that opens the grain first. And that also changes the color, by the way.
So, this has fed into my OCD/ADD nature perfectly - time to start testing and gather some empirical data!
But this is turning into its own little rabbit hole. So far I've spent more time and money testing for the right combination than it will be to actually stain the final production pieces.
Sigh.
Its not just the color - each one applies differently. Some look great on the oak trim, but blotch up on the birch. Or vice versa. The library will at least be a mix of three stock types - Oak, dark birch, light birch (the birch color variety having to do with revolving stock at the big box store that I didn't notice till I got the pieces home). We really, really wanted to use some nice finished Fir we found for the trim, but none of the stains took particularly well to this - with most of the color just wiping off, the grain was so tight.
So far the front runner is Minwax Red Chestnut. Unless we go with Red Oak. Or another stain manufacturer altogether. Or just leave the wood natural. Or perhaps we should switch to a lighter color scheme that's easier to apply. Or...
Next step is perhaps a visit to the locally owned paint and stain store to see what they recommend as an alternative to the big box brands. I'm sure that will give me a whole new gamut of stains to test out!

Previous postings on the library construction:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Making the hot seat...

We bring in the BIG saw!

Brought this to bear on the frame for the window seat, as it beats trying to cut 2x6's with a circular saw

Taking the wheels off the router...

Last shelf unit roughed in. So we're finished using the router and...

Oh, just shelve it...

With the snow on Saturday, I finally get back to work on the west wall...