Sorry to bring up an old post - i'm hoping the OP is still around - my wife and I are looking to refinish our cabinets using this gel stain. It appears your cabinets are the exact same color and construction as ours. Our concern is even though the front fascia and doors appear to be real wood, the sides are laminate paper. Were your cabinets the same way? If so, did you notice a difference in finish color between the laminate and wood? How many coats did you apply? I took an old bool shelf which is the same color as the sides of our cabinets with laminate paper over particle board and when I went to stain it with General Finishes brown mahogany, it came out way way lighter then your door picture above which I assume is real wood. With the attached picture, each quarter in the test piece is a different sand paper grit. Top right is 600, Top Left is 400, Bottom left is 320 and bottom right is 150 grit. The more course, the darker it was we found. I personally like the 400 grit sample, but i'm afraid the doors and fronts won't match once stained. Hoping you can provide some advice! This post was edited by adgjqetuo on Mon, Jan 12, 15 at 15:00

You cannot change the color lighter without sanding. Sanding will, in itself, make the color lighter. What you have now is brown and amber. Sanding will remove the amber and lighten the brown. The other colors you have are shades of grey. To get any grey in the floor will require sanding most of the brown away. Then apply grey color with a stain or dye. It will probably take a combination of stain/dye colors to get what you want. Seems to me, with the grain differences in the flooring, the closest overall look you would be able to get would be similar to the fireplace. I doubt the floors can be colored to match all of the different areas---the countertop, cabinets, etc. You are going to need a decorator familiar with coloring wood. Not an area where there are a lot of exprerienced folks. Or, buying about 40 pieces of similar oak flooring and experimenting. Being aware new flooring without the previous stain that was sanded off can look different from the sanded flooring.

Sooo new issue - staining the bannister/baluster to match. Painter is here (flooring guys don't/wont do it) and even though he waterpopped the wood, the stain is going on much grayer than the color of the floor. I don't know if it's the amount of water he used (too little), the application technique (damp rag), the lack of drying time (a few minutes!) or what but the waterpopped sample looks indistinguishable from the unwaterpopped - both look grayish. Wondering if I need to bring someone else in to help or if we should try a different stain color blend like weathered oak and bona natural, 1:1. Any thoughts? Also, I'm not thrilled with the sanding job on the baluster - there are quite a few areas where they didn't get the dark stain up, and it's especially bad around the bottom of the newel post. I don't know if this is something I should accept or whether this is subpar work. Would love thoughts from the pros!! Thank you thank you!

This was caused by one board "drinking" more stain than the other boards. There are a variety of reasons that the pores of one board are more open than the others and there are a variety of ways to fix it, some are easy and some are much more difficult. The best way to fix this door is to give the other boards more stain to drink. If the OP goes with a different stain on the entire door they are just going to be right back in the same situation. If the OP tries to sand and stain all but one board a darker color and blend them together would be one of the most difficult ways to match them. Additionally, the OP would have to sand most of the door again to even attempt that and they would likely have to sand it several more times while adjusting the color to get a good match, and then the moment light hits it the difference may be obvious. If the OP is OK going darker then the easiest solution is just to apply more stain to the boards that need a bit of darkening. The stain manufacturer will have instructions on the product that explain how to do that. If in doubt @Angie Liollio can post the product they are using here and and I will walk them through how to apply a second coat of stain with that product. Many people here have said stain once, but most furniture, doors, etc. are stained twice. Staining twice generally evens out the finish. There are many options out there for fixing the door, but given where the OP is at right now, if they can go darker, then their best option is to apply a second coat and blend it well near the darker board. Moreover, if that doesn't work the OP hasn't wasted a massive amount of time and energy. Whereas any solution based on sanding and refinishing is a lot of work. If the OP can't go darker the best option is to try to close the pores in that one board, so instead of sanding the entire door, the OP would just be sanding one board. They could burnish the board a bit by sanding with a finer grain of sandpaper. If it is still too dark they could thin the stain a bit and if it is still too dark you probably need to get a mahogany grain filler. Mahogany is notorious for its open pores and so often you have apply a grain filler before staining. It is not that hard to do that for that single board and you can likely get a good blended match with some effort. ----- I am a huge fan of dyes but I wouldn't use an aniline dye on an exterior door. Dyes are notoriously reactive to to UV light and so anything that is going to get sun exposure will likely fade over time. Even a UV blocker will eventually absorb all the UV it can and the dye will then fade relatively fast. Of course, if you are going very dark it may slow the process down and opacity itself is a UV blocker. Pigmented stains are much less reactive to UV lighting although the underlying wood still is.