Giving ugly orange Pine an Oak look

Careful_with_that_Axe

I have mainly Oak furniture in my living room. However, I have a corner TV cabinet that suite my purposes fine, but is orangey pine.
I can't afford to replace it and would like to be able to make it look as much like my existing Oak as possible and can't get my head round how to achieve this.

The unit appears to be solid Pine but has lots of angles and corners and I simply do not have the energy to sand it down and stain it. Would a wax stain work?

Would appreciate any suggestions on how to achieve this. Many thanks.

leveller2911

First job would be to completey remove any existing wax/polish or stain and to do this you will need to either sand it completely(not easy around mouldings) or you could try sending it to the strippers which could work but equelly it could fall apart.

There is no easy solution but once removed the best thing to do is to apply a stain (after testing on the underside) allow to dry and then wax.

olias

As stated, the only way to stain would be to sand back completely to bare wood. Even then, on pine, an oak stain may not turn out quite how you were expecting and so may still not blend in. Only other (cheap) option would be to paint it an approximate matching oak colour. To do that, first paint it with liquid sanding then overcoat with your oak coloured paint.

Olias

Careful_with_that_Axe

Thanks for the replies; you are confirming what I suspected.
Thank you so much olias for giving me the heads up on a product I didnt't even know existed! I can see that the liquid sanding is something that will come in very useful in the future for various things.

Bennifred

Would you consider painting the unit to fit in with your decor, rather than struggling to get it to match the oak furniture?

dander

Depends what you mean by oak - if you mean a dark oak, then you might be able to use a coloured varnish over the top of what you've got. If it's more of a limed oak you want then that probably wouldn't work because you'd be trying to go lighter than the existing colour - although you might be able to knock the colour back a bit - or maybe with enough coats you coul lighten it because with a coloured varnish the tint is in the varnish, like paint, rather than relying on staining the wood - never tried to go that way, so I'm not really sure how it would turn out. You can get them in a matt finish.

sunshinetours

Bennifred wrote: »

Would you consider painting the unit to fit in with your decor, rather than struggling to get it to match the oak furniture?

I would also agree with this - try and achieve a contrast or complementary colour with your other decor as at least it will then look like a painted unit rather than a strangely stained unit which could easily happen!

Careful_with_that_Axe

It is dark Oak I have, but it's not terribly dark and not so far off the colour of the Oak if the orange could be taken back iyswim, which is why I thought about changing it to match more.
I do like painted furniture, but I thought the unit would stand out more painted as it would be the sole piece that wasn't just natural wood.

Let's face it, in the grand scheme of things, it's hardly a major problem, it's just a niggle. I got it as a freebie so maybe I'll just live with it until I have another Oak auction find!

Thanks for all the suggestions; even if I don't use them for the TV Unit, they've given me ideas on how to achieve various things. I have a beautiful old bureau that's Oak that has been stained really dark so maybe I'll get the liquid sander and make that the next project.