Popular Post Ronn W Posted March 6, 2022 Popular Post Report Share Posted March 6, 2022 I just finished a small table for a large house plant to live on. It is 14" square and 12" tall. My wife's friend wanted it to have a beach theme. So I used white oak with a whitewash water base stain. Now General Finishes whitewash stain allows the color of the wood to be seen through the whitewash so I decided to stain the wood blue before using the white. I mixed transtint blue dye with some whitewash. Worked great - one coat. Then 4 coats of whitewash to get the look I wanted. Then 3 coats of General Finishes water based poly. My mistake is that I only but one coat of whitewash (not a great sealer) on the underside of the top. When I picked up the top to install it on the table I saw the it was cupped. Slap the forehead and swear. The top surface (where all the moisture from the many coats of water base stain was applied) was the convex side of the cupped just as I would expect if I had thought it through. Before throwing it away and starting over I decided try to even out the cup. I rough sanded the under side to expose mostly bare wood and spray water on it. I covered the surface with blue Scott towels and sprayed them with water. Kept adding a little spary every few hours. After about 2 days almost all the cup was gone. I dried off the surface with a rag and applied a coat of waterbase poly. As it dried, water tended to pond on the surface in irregular patterns. I thought maybe the poly would never dry, but it did and I wiped away the excess water and did a second coat. Then wiped away the water again and did a third coat - no water this time. I let it sit overnight and it was still straight the next morning. I installed the top with table 8's. I just hope the it does not self destruct over the next couple of weeks. I am taking bets. Lesson learned. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkinneb Posted March 6, 2022 Report Share Posted March 6, 2022 I bet it will be fine no that both sides have the same finish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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