Would you stain solid pine furniture?

Good evening.

I want to re-stain two solid pine furniture pieces (painted). Actually, I would prefer to do it myself.
As already mentioned, the furniture is painted. The desired color after staining would be honey brown rosewood. Because the old pine furniture should then match my new rosewood furniture.

So, here are my questions for the pros:

1. I assume I have to remove the paint?! How do I best go about that? I thought about using an orbital sander. For the hard-to-reach areas, manual work is necessary. What grit should I use? Or maybe there is a better method or machine to remove the paint?

2. Which stain would you use to achieve the desired color effect? Which stain is suitable – brand, links, etc.?
Or is there another alternative to staining to get the rosewood tone?

3. How exactly should I proceed when staining? Is it difficult for a beginner or is it something I can handle?
Are there any tricks involved?

Best regards in advance
Macker

Hello dude,

I have worked on pine furniture from time to time. However, it is a difficult subject!

1. That's right, the varnish must go, otherwise staining won't work! First try it on a spot that is as inconspicuous as possible: With sandpaper you will have the problem that depending on the applied varnish, the paper will fill up very quickly with varnish and thus become unusable. This way, you would need endless amounts of abrasive material, which in turn would cause you high costs.
Alternative suggestion: strip the furniture with lye. There are plenty of good products for this, and you can get them anywhere. Preferably at a specialized store. However, you must sand the surfaces afterward again to make them smooth and fine.

For staining: I personally like working with so-called spirit stains because they penetrate deeply and dry quickly. (Powder pigment dissolved in alcohol) Clou offers an extremely wide range of colors for this! But you can surely get these from other manufacturers as well... The problem, however, is the regular application, for which you have to work wet-on-wet to achieve the result!
Alternatively, there are water-based stains. These also come in various colors – Clou and others.

Most important rule: Always stain a test piece! And then always judge the result whether you are satisfied with it or not.

After staining, you still have to treat the surface because the mentioned stains are not abrasion resistant and also react to moisture or even just hand sweat!
You can oil, wax, or of course also varnish the surface.

Good luck and have fun