Can anyone help me? I have found a piece of used furniture that is painted a cream color and distressed. I seriously doubt that it could be stripped (I suspect it might be pressed wood underneath the finish). I really like the piece but the finish just won't work for me. Can you use gel stain over painted wood to get a wood stained look? The piece is quite large with a lot of detail and is not cheap even used so I don't want to buy it if it can't be done.
Where would the wood grain effect come from? If you sprayed the stain on - you would have a stain colored "lens" over a cream painted piece of furniture. If you applied the gel stain with a rag - you would have a mottled stain finish over a cream painted piece of furniture. If you "dragged" the stain - you would have a "strie" or stripe effect over a cream painted piece of furniture.
In order to get a wood stained look you would need to do some form of "woodgraining" depending on how sophisticated you want your woodgraining to be, you would probably at a minimum need to "base coat" the piece to create the right background color. Then you would use a "glaze" rather than a gel stain (most gel stains won't hold a pattern very well) to artificially grain the piece. If you are new to woodgraining you can look around here to learn more: Woodgraining
Once you have the base coat and glaze color worked out, you could do a simple "flogging" or a dragged brush grain, but this still will require a little bit of a learning curve to do an adequate job.
Hope that helps.
Note: you could use Old Masters Wiping Stain over the proper base coat to do your "graining" as an alternative to using "glaze".
Thanks for your reply. I'm sure someone could make it work but I certainly don't have the knowledge or experience to make it look nice. I really appreciate your detailed, informative answer.
