I have this thing.
I really, really, really like the look of white oak. When searching for our new flooring, I kept telling everyone “I want it to look like white oak that has been clear-coated, nothing else.” No gray tint, no whitewash, no stain. Just plain ol’ white oak. Turns out, after all the samples I looked it, I came back to the Stuga Tivoli sample, the first sample I had ordered. And sure enough, it has no stain, just a lacquer clear coat.
We ordered the Stuga Tivoli flooring for the majority of our house, and as I add other wood elements, I don’t want them to clash with the floors. So naturally, when Andrew asked what the vanity material should be in our new hall bath, I quickly responded “white oak.” Cue the eye roll.
Here’s the thing about white oak – while beautiful, its not the most budget friendly. And as wood prices have skyrocketed lately, it’s even more of a splurge. Not to mention my husband is a hoarder of wood, none of which seems to include any white oak boards. Not surprisingly, we had a lot of good quality red oak given to us by a friend that Andrew insisted we use for the vanity build.
Free material? It’s hard to argue with that. So I didn’t. Instead, I pivoted to find a way to take the red out of red oak.
If you have missed the beginning of this One Room Challenge, you can catch up on all my posts here:
- Hall Bathroom Inspiration and Befores: Week 1
- Demo + Prep: Week 2
- Hall Bath Tile Picks: Week 3
- Tile Installation: Week 4
Wood Bleaching
I’m no stranger to wood bleaching, I used this technique on our herringbone barn door and in last year’s ORC, I used a different method on a pair of nightstands. The red oak we used for building the bathroom vanity doesn’t have as much red undertone as some other red oak I have seen. But none the less, I know when you add a finishing product (polyurethane, polycrylic, etc) the undertones are highlighted and it tends to look much more red after this step than the raw wood does alone.
I first used a scrap piece of wood to test a few different methods. I also tried a few gray tinted stains. Green is across from red on the color wheel, so theoretically, a stain with green in it (which some gray tints have) could offset the red undertones. I didn’t have much luck with the gray stains I tried and most of them left the wood darker than I wanted.
Ultimately, I decided to use the same Clorox method I used on our herringbone barn door. Since the back and right side of the vanity butt up against a wall, I tested out the Clorox bleaching method on the right side of the vanity first, just to make sure it worked on a larger scale. When I used this method before, the wood was yellow pine. To play it safe, I tested two rounds of bleach plus one coat of polycrylic before attempting anything on the front or the left side of the vanity.
And it worked! I was a little skeptical at first because the bleach left a residue that darkened the wood in a very unappealing way, but a light sand remedied that problem. Once I was convinced this would provide the look I was after, I went for it. Here’s the process I used:
Apply Bleach
Since the vanity was custom built, it was raw wood and everything was sanded smooth. If you are refinishing an existing piece, you will need to strip or sand the furniture down to bare wood before starting. I applied full strength Clorox bleach with a foam brush to the vanity. I applied enough to make sure all the wood was damp, but not enough that it pooled on the surface of the wood or dripped down the vertical pieces. Then, I allowed it to dry completely.
Next, I lightly sanded the vanity with 120 grit sandpaper, and applied another round of bleach. Again, I let it dry completely, then I used a damp microfiber rag to wipe down the vanity. This neutralizes the bleach and removes some of the residue that can be left. There were some spots where the bleach left yellowish-brown spots, but as I mentioned above, those sanded off in the next step.
Sanding
When wood gets wet, it raises the grain, making it rough again. So, although we sanded all pieces of the vanity before bleaching, it needed to be sanded again. I started with an 80 grit sandpaper, then a 120 grit, then a 220 grit. And low and behold, I had a beautiful vanity that didn’t look like it was made from red oak at all.
You can see the difference in the original red oak and the bleached red oak in this photo:
It’s subtle and not as big of a contrast in the photo above as it was in real life but the top coat would have brought out the red tones even more. And you can keep applying bleach until you receive the desired look you want. I only used two rounds of bleach here but on our barn door, I used three. It just depends on the wood species and coloring.
My main goal was to try and make the wood on the vanity look more like our white oak hardwood flooring. While there is no hardwood flooring in the hall bathroom, the vanity sits mere inches from the doorway where the tile transitions to white oak hardwoods. Since the two wood tones are so close I wanted them to be similar.
I’m happy to report I was able to make the vanity close to the same coloring as our new hardwood floors. I’ll be sharing the rest of the vanity progress in another post coming soon! Until then, you can check out what the other One Room Challenge participants are working on here.
