A clear coat of stain? I'm not sure what that means. If you want to put a color to your wood that isn't a paint, then you need to stain it. Minwax is good for this, comes in many colors. After the wood is stained and this has dried, you can seal it and finish it. This is usually done with a polyurethane, two coats at least with sanding in between coats. The first coat of poly will raise the grain of the wood and make it rough. After sanding, the wood should remain pretty smooth. As for filling the holes, you can buy putty for this that is premixed. Minwax makes some and also the Color Putty Corporation. If you are not happy with the match that comes in the premixed cans, you can mix two colors together to get a better match. As for the weather, just be sure to stop working around 3 or 4 so that things have some time to dry before the colder temps arrive. Sticking a fan in the area to keep the air moving around always helps with drying.

We have a mix of woods in our house and think it looks just fine. :-) Our flooring is natural white oak, stairs are natural red oak. Doors and trim, and stair rails are Golden Oak stained red oak and our pine (Andersen) windows and trim were stained to match the doors. The only window that has different trim, is the kitchen window. Because it is sandwiched between our cherry cabs (which have a 25% or quarter-cut Harvest Gold stain), we opted to match the cabs for that window (our cab manuf actually supplied, and stained the cherry trim to match the cabs, and the pine window frame was stained to match as well). We have natural black walnut furniture in our DR--somewhat open to the kitchen. The only thing I'd do differently today, might be to use a less golden/orange, more neutral stain for our doors, trim, windows. Otherwise, I like the way all the wood tones, grains, and colors harmonize together to create a happy, woodsy palette!

Pretty much all the houses in my neighborhood have knotty pine somewhere. Most did eventually paint over successfully, but if it's real knotty pine you need to know what you are doing or there will be bleed through. in our master, there's knotty pine but the original owners did a dark matter strain (no shiny orangey) and I've grown to love it. I've also grown to like the typical knotty pine in the living room, but only bc the light is great in there and we have hung big paintings on the wood walls 😉. seriously, we may end up keeping it when we remodel, but we aren't 100% sure. knotty pine cabinets in kitchen will eventually go when we remodel. don't like those and never will. so my point is that as you relax and live in your space, you might be surprised at how your perspective changes. I am.

Oh, I’m definitely not doing whitwashing then if it looks like the 90’s- we are trying to take that out of the house. Thank you! ( I would show pictures of our room, but we are finishing our floors in our living room, so everything is in here right now...) not much room for you to see. No our ceilings are popcorned, that’s next to go. We have a fireplace, and a large floor to ceiling window opposite of it. I’ve have found probably every picture out there with paneling, and a lot of them are beautiful. I think if it was a room were weren’t in everyday I could win this battle, but it’s our bedroom. That leaves us to painting then (he does live here too...haha...) I actually think paneling looks stunning when painted navy. I may even let the knots show through and not make it perfect with that color...hmmm?