Reno On A Budget... Knife Block

In out last post about the fudge you could see our not so pretty knife block in the background(we tried to hide it dang!)  and that got us thinking what we could do to it. At first we were just going to chunk it, it was way too light for our home and it had no character. We left it on the counter a few more days and then decided we would try giving it a stain and see if it looked any better. We thought about painting it but couldn't decide on a color that would work in our kitchen and not scream hey look at me. So staining it was!

As you can see it isn't horrible by any means, it was just boring! We started off by sanding down the block with general purpose sand paper. Make sure your sanding up and down in the direction of the grain, and not side ways (we made this mistake) you can definitely tell in the finished product. It caused etched lines in the sideways direction (whoops lesson learned).

We used RUST-O-LEUM Wood Stain in Dark Walnut. As you can see we LOVE to stain a little too much. You have something you don't like, just stain it (just kidding... but really) We've had this can for which seems like forever and there is still so much left. Anyways, we sanded the block down three times just to be safe and with an old paint brush paint on the stain. As simple as 1-2-3!

In the picture the stain just looks like brown paint but we promise it's stain (you can see the can in the background if you don't believe us haha). We let the stain sit for about 20 minutes and found some old rags to rub the stain off with. Depending on what type of wood it is you might have to put a little elbow grease into removing the stain.

Ta-Da the finished product.. We actually really like it (yes we are surprised) we were scared that we didn't pull up enough of the original stain and it would stain multicolored but it came out pretty well if we do say so ourselves (and we do!). The cost of this was free and only took 30 minutes and we had a new piece for our kitchen. We hope you enjoyed and give it a try if you have an old tired knife block sitting around.