How to Achieve a Rustic Farmhouse Wood Look With Stain

This is the piece we started with. The top was veneer and had a lot of damage, including fairly deep scratches. We wanted to keep the top wood, so we decided to sand it down and sand out as much damage as possible. We also knew we wanted to create a rustic farmhouse look for this piece, so we decided to do a double layer staining method to achieve that look that would simultaneously help cover any remaining surface damage.

After sanding to natural wood, we applied a dark brown stain to the top as well as the top row of drawers of our piece. The stain we used was Provincial by Minwax, but any dark brown stain will do(: We applied this stain with a clean cloth and ensured to rub it in evenly on all areas of the wood.

Next we created a paint wash mixture using 1 part paint and 1 part water. You can use any light coloured paint but we used the paint that we painted the body of our dresser in, that way the colour of the stain looked coherent with the paint.

After creating the paint wash, we applied it evenly with a clean cloth on top of the stain we had already applied. We applied an even and generous amount of the paint wash and then took another clean dry cloth and used that to buff out the wash in order to make it less pigmented and ensure it’s even across the whole surface. The key is to buff out the paint wash enough to achieve the desired look you are going for - it is up to your discretion how pigmented you want it to be! If you have any damage on your wood like we did, this is the perfect staining method because the paint wash on top of a stain helps cover the appearance of surface damage. The beauty of this look is that it is supposed to be rustic, so perfection is not necessary🙂

This is the final result of the double layer farmhouse stain! If you start with natural light wood it is just a couple of simple steps to get to this rustic barn wood look(: