For this week's project, we're back to my roots! Which means we're creating knock off Restoration Hardware colors today! This project is easy peasy, just apply to wood and watch the magic happen! You're going to love this tutorial to easily achieve the Reclaimed Gray Oak look.
Here's the "before" of this typical, out dated oak table. There's a million of these babies floating around from the 80's and 90's. It shouldn't be too hard to get your hands on one, and at a good price.
If you're using a brand new, or raw wood table, please skip down to step #5. Thanks!
1.] STRIP
First you'll want to apply a thick layer of Citristrip to the table. Citristrip has a tendency to dry out before it can eat away at all the layers of stain and lacquer. So covering the wet stripper with a garbage bag helps keep the moisture in while it works.
2.] SCRAPE
When the stripper turns white, it's ready to be scraper off. Remove the bags and scrape as much of the mixture off, as you can. You'll want to try and get down ti the raw wood if you can. But being careful not to scrape or damage the wood itself.
3.] CLEAN
You will want to wipe the table down with mineral spirits and a rag to remove any existing residue. This should remove any sticky residue from the tabletop.
4.] SAND
Here's the labor portion. You want to use a palm sander and 80 grit sandpaper to make sure the wood is completely down to raw. You can see in this video what I mean.
5.] STAIN
Weatherwood released a new stain that can turn oak into a beautiful driftwood gray, called Light Oaking. This product can work on any wood, so it's incredibly easy to use.
6.] LIGHTEN
If you want to lighten the look, you can add a coat of White Maintenance Oil. It adds the look of patina and is just generally gorgeous. Simply brush or wipe onto wood, allow to sit 3-7 minutes. Then wipe off with a clean cloth. Or you can watch the video above.
See how pretty and soft the white maintenance oil is? It's much more subtle than a paint product and really just makes the wood look sun-kissed.
For additional project looking to achieve the Restoration Hardware look, you can search our archives for tons of inpiration or check out this popular post below!
I've also got a paint update for you guys! We are selecting our final shades for our The Furniture Paint launch, so keep your fingers crossed for me! xoxo
All the baby angels!! In Italy, these angels are called Putti. 👼🏻👼🏻👼🏻 The ones I shared in the below post are all from larger portraits in the Uffizi - found in Florence, Italy. I love the ones with colored wings. I hope you will friend me on Facebook, so I can see what you like to do, too!
This project is so heartwarming. The kitchen in the center of the home today and this one is no exception! Let's see how to get the look of their gorgeous table!
For this project we used alder, if you're using a different species check out this color chart for weathered wood options: Color Chart. Sand the boards and with 80 grit sandpaper and now they're ready for you to apply stain.
2.] STAIN
If you want a pure gray, you should use Reclamation, if you want a gray with brown in it, use Salvage. Using a wide brush or sponge brush, apply heavy coat of stain. Like in the above video, the wood will absorb the stain as it dries. The color will change from raw wood to stained.
3.] LIGHTEN
To lighten the wood, use White Maintenance Oil Topcoat. This will lock in that light driftwood look and protect the wood. It's a wipe on and wipe off application. Use a brush or rag to apply and a clean rag to immediately take it back off the wood. The longer it stays on the wood, the whiter the wood will get.
4.] PROTECT
To seal the wood, use Weatherwood Polyurethane. This will lock in that light driftwood look and protect the wood. Just brush on 2-3 coats.
You can save 10% on Weatherwood products, like you saw here, with code WELCOME10.
If you love Restoration Hardware's color as much as I do, this project is for YOU. The below image is from their catalog, it's Restoration Hardware's Reclaimed Grey Oak. The color is completely perfect and now's it's also easy to achieve!
To achieve this look, start with a raw wood surface.
The wood must be sanded, you can have it sent through a large sanding machine at the mill or you can sand it really well with a hand sander. You should start with 80 grit and then 120 grit. (You can do a finish sand at the end, at 220 or above.)
2] STAIN
Applying the Restoration stain is like a piece of cake, read "even easier than typical stains." Using a large brush and drench the wood with stain. (See above video, also shown on oak.) Let the wood air dry for 60 minutes.
3.] SEAL
If your project is on a high traffic or water area, you will want to let seal with 2-3 coats of Weatherwood Varnish, allowing 120 minutes between coats.
Didn't the color turn out dreamy? The process could not be easier. Do not forget readers save 10% with code: WELCOME10. If you have any questions, leave'm in the comments below and I will see you tomorrow at the party!
To digitize or not…Is that the question? COVID is shaking things up in the retail world. This year, digital startups may look like frantic Irish immigrants planting their stakes in the e-commerce land grab. Like Tom Cruise in Far and Away, companies will be expanding market share.
Who can enter? Really anyone! Meet one competitor in the e-commerce coatings race, Becca Berger. MBA turned entrepreneur extraordinaire. This Silicon Valley CleanTech inventor owns a company called WeatherWash Coatings, an earth-friendly reactive stain that turns raw wood into barnwood by using tannic acid inside the lumber to achieve a specific color. Her product has no VOC’s. She invented the most cleanest product on the market. If you check Home Depot online, her reviews are 4-5 stars. Recently her product launched through Walmart online, and from day one sold as much as ten brick and mortar stores. How is that possible?
Rebecca has a strong foothold on Instagram with 28,000 followers. Type “wood stain” on Instagram’s search, and she’s often ranked #1. She has over 17,000 followers on Facebook. An impressive portfolio. Support videos. Chat support. Phone support. A blog. An app and an algorithm. She doesn’t even have a brick and mortar store. She doesn’t want or need a storefront. 100% of her sales are e-commerce. She started with stains because it’s niche, and the most significant competitor, Minwax, lost distribution with Home Depot after Sherwin Williams acquired the lagging brand for an eye-popping $11.3B.
The largest entrants in the digital market space race are undoubtedly Walmart and Home Depot; Walmart is the world’s largest economy. Depot is the world’s second-largest economy. Four years ago, in their 2017, 10-K report, Depot revealed they plan to compete with Amazon by spending $11B on “store, supply chain, digital experience, and people.” With that kind of funding, the retailer known as the eight-hundred-pound gorilla expects to be on equal footing with Amazon’s 1-click, 2-day order fulfillment by the end of 2020. Can Depot achieve the “flywheel of success” by buying success? Maybe? It should be duly noted that part of Bezo’s high growth strategy is attributable to acquisitions like Zappos, Petco, and Whole Foods. But Depot is not in acquisition mode, so most likely not.
In 2001, Home Depot opened its online store. Nineteen years later, they are still nowhere near Amazon’s e-commerce platform. According to Depot’s 2019 10-K, their ambition is to be a “One Home Depot experience.” However, that vision is not clearly defined. What is clear is that Depot’s initial $5.4B investment in e-commerce is taking longer to recoup than expected. Why? There are many reasons, but one major obstacle is that 90% of developed software will not be utilized. Not to mention when the software is finally available, the hardware used to write the software is outdated. More software development questions will buzz around like murder hornets, “What is our hardware budget? What should we expect to pay for software development? How long will it take? Why isn’t it working? Can we outsource development?” Bezos has already answered ALL of these questions, and he did it about nineteen years ago.
Bezos developed a sturdy platform from HTML source code to the back-end JavaScript. He also custom built the hardware so soundly, he is one of the few companies that survived the dot com bust. He then expanded Amazon by investing in more hardware and software. Bezos owns AWS and an undisclosed share in Google, meaning that large retailers relying on Google’s SEO or Amazon’s AWS services will compete with Amazon on Amazon’s hardware/software. The end game may be what happened to mom-and-pop bookshops, here today, gone tomorrow.
Competition is also ramping up. E-commerce is a different game than retailers are used to playing. Historically, retailers had to battle for sales in newspapers, radio, and TV ads. Suppliers were never a threat. Each retailer competed on price, product, and availability. Now retailers could lose sales to suppliers. A cheetah gazelle relationship is developing between the two. So, who is the cheetah, retailers or suppliers? That’s hard to answer because suppliers like Sherwin Williams are building websites that sell directly to end consumers while simultaneously maintaining 4,106 brick and mortar stores. But they aren’t the only ones building websites. Inventors like Becca, mom-and-pop shops, Walmart, Depot, Sherwin, Ace, and Amazon all have websites. The cheetah is whoever gets to the Do-It-Yourself or Do-It-For-Me e-commerce consumer first, captures the gazelle, stakes their claim, expands their fences, and grows market share.
Amazon will maintain a steady lead once it grows into hardware and paint because the e-commerce onboarding process for Depot and Lowes can take up to a year and costs suppliers several thousands of dollars, which means lots of suppliers won’t even make it to Depot/Lowe’s online e-commerce platform. Not only that, but Depot is marking suppliers’ products up 100% even though they aren’t shelving suppliers’ products, picking, packing, or shipping. The value seems to be the brand. Lowe’s onboarding process is equivalent to Depot’s. Sherwin doesn’t even have a process for onboarding suppliers. They have an email that they don’t reply to. Most of these overlooked suppliers will go straight to Amazon for no other reason than it only takes fifteen minutes for suppliers to onboard, giving Amazon a favorable lead. Of course, a faster cheetah i.e., inventor, could sprint to the lead by leveraging platforms like social media, a professional website, and leveraging relationships with established e-commerce brands. Still, these contenders are often acquired early on, so finishing the race becomes questionable.
In a nutshell, Mr. Bezos may have fired the first shot for the digital market space land grab, took his place on the start line, and quickly sprinted ahead of the competitors. Time will tell who captures the most valued digital spaces and carves out their claim. Will it be retail brands? Suppliers? Inventors? Mom & pop? or Amazon?
I found this project to be super inspiring! Magically turning the most inexpensive douglas fir from Home Depot into an incredible farmhouse table, perfect for this show home or yours!
If you're looking to replicate this beautiful weathered look, you'll need to start with douglas fir. Our beams were rough sawn (textured) so they didn't need sanded. If your project is smooth wood, then give it a quick sand with 80 grit before staining.
Choose you wood stain color. This company went with Weatherwood'Savagestain- that's the top option of the photo.
3.] STAIN
Stain wood using a large paint brush. You want to really drench the wood. That's all you have to do, just let the wood stain absorb into the wood. Douglas fir is very very sappy. Reactive wood stain will not react with sap, because there are no tannins in sap. That means, if you get any sap spots you'll need to re-sand those and then stain them again.
4.] WHITE WASH
The White Maintenance Oil + Salvage will give you a really cool look. It can be brushed or ragged on- here they applied it to the raised edges of the wood to create the look of patina.
Just brush on, allow to sit 5-10 minutes (longer for lighter shade) and then wipe back!
5.] PROTECT
Seal Weatherwood products with 2-3 coats of Weatherwood Varnish for superior protection.
I hope you'll follow along on our awesome adventures abroad and of course more fantastic projects to come! Save 10% on Weatherwood products with code: WELCOME10.
Happy New Year's, friends! Last New Year'e Eve we were in a tiny town in Southern Italy called Broncaleone. We were the only people staying at the resort, since it's mostly a summer spot. So Zack and I danced in the moonlight on our rooftop terrace and rang in the holiday underneath a bright winter moon. It was romantic and unforgettable. This year we're excited to ring in the New Year in London! Have you been? What should we go see?
To achieve this look, start with douglas fir that's been milled into a headboard. We hand selected some douglas fir and took it to our local mill. They glued the edges and then planed it to create one flat surface. Planing the wood after glueing it removes all traces of glue. The milling cost was nearly nothing and it was totally worth it because I don't have the clamps to keep the boards drying flat, so the cost of the clamps was about the same as having it done for me!
2] SAND
The wood must be sanded, especially being that it's douglas fir. That's because of the way douglas fir reacts when the wood is cut with a saw. You can have it sent through a large sanding machine at the mill or you can sand it really well with a hand sander. You should start with 60 grit and then 80 grit.
3] STAIN
Applying the stain is like a piece of cake. Using a large brush and drench the wood with stain. (See above video.) Let the wood air dry.
4] PROTECT
Weatherwood is a stain, not a topcoat, so you'll need to seal the wood. To hold this weathered look, I recommend using our Varnish sealer.
This project was a piece of cake. We actually made a few of them as mockups for a retailer. This color was really popular. I hope you like it! Let me know if you have questions, I'm happy to help. You can save 10% on Weatherwood products, like you saw here, with code WELCOME10. I hope to see you at tomorrow's party!
Have you seen Restoration Hardware's new-ish branch, RH Modern? It's the same gorgeous RH look, but with the clean lines of mid-century modern pieces. I found this bedroom with the perfect "gray oak" furniture and I had to see if I could replicate it!
For this project we used alder, if you're using a different species check out this color chart for weathered wood options: Color Chart. Sand the boards and with 80 grit sandpaper and now they're ready for you to apply stain.
2.] STAIN
If you want a pure gray, you should use Reclamation, if you want a gray with brown in it, use Salvage. Using a wide brush or sponge brush, apply heavy coat of stain. Like in the above video, the wood will absorb the stain as it dries. The color will change from raw wood to stained.
3.] LIGHTEN
To lighten the wood, use White Maintenance Oil Topcoat. This will lock in that light driftwood look and protect the wood. It's a wipe on and wipe off application. Use a brush or rag to apply and a clean rag to immediately take it back off the wood. The longer it stays on the wood, the whiter the wood will get.
4.] PROTECT
Apply 2-3 coats of Weatherwood Varnish to protect furniture.
You can save 10% on Weatherwood products, like you saw here, with code WELCOME10. I hope to see you at tomorrow's party!
Take a walk down this Bologna restaurant alley with us!! It’s packed with tourists, fresh food, people eating, & rad details. I’m crazy obsessed with these colorful buildings- they’re all shades of red, orange and yellow. It’s looks so warm and inviting. Bologna was such a wonderful surprise. We did an overnight here and toured the famous spots!
1.] SAND (SORT OF): Normally, I'd say you should sand wood and with 80 grit sandpaper, but for projects that have intricate carving you'll want to use something else. You can purchase denatured alcohol, it's inexpensive and faster than sanding. Apply it like you would stain, with a spray gun or paint brush. Make sure to the wood the day before you plan to stain, so it can completely dry.
2.] STAIN: If you want a pure driftwood gray, you should useReclamation. If you want a brown with brown in it, useSalvage. Using a wide brush, roller, or sponge brush, apply heavy coat of stain. Like in the above video, the wood will absorb the stain as it dries. The color will change from raw wood to stained.
Once you're wood is dry, which takes about 30 minutes, you're ready to move to the next step. You will see the before and after transformation of raw alder to Reclamation stained below.
Then you want to decide if you like the color as is, in which case just seal it with Weatherwood Varnish.
If you want to lighten it, White Maintenance Oil Topcoat. This will lock in that light driftwood look and protect the wood.
3.] LIGHTEN / DARKEN: We decided to lighten the wood, so we used wipe on application, brushing is faster but a rag will make the product go further. It's a brush or rag it on.
Allow the oil to penetrate for 5-10 minutes. The longer it sits, the whiter the effect. The use a clean rag to wipe off. If it gets too pale, just buff the finish back down. The White Maintenance Oil will provide light to medium wood protection.
4.] SEAL: Depending on your project! If you need heavy duty wood protection, you will want to use Weatherwood Varnish over the cured oils. If it's a cabinet or something, that will need the varnish!
If you're really loving this color and you'd like another project idea, check out this:
