Hollis + Cianci

Custom cherry bookcase with walnut drawer pulls.

Staining Wood Tip. Have you have ever built a project and started staining it only to be disappointed? Welcome to the club, we have been there many times too. Staining can be tricky and this tip may help you on your next project. The attached photo illustrates what a sanding sealer can do. Both are the same stain on maple, but in the top sample we made use of a sanding sealer between multiple coats of stain. One of its purposes is to minimize blotching and give the wood a mo...re uniform look. Wood comes from a tree and trees are meant to soak up water. Unfortunately, when it comes to stain, wood doesn’t always do this job uniformly and it can make a nice board look like some sort of awful brown camouflage. A sanding sealer helps with this especially with woods like pine and maple. Typically, you have to make sealers yourself, but don’t worry it’s easy. It’s basically a thinned down clearcoat. De-waxed shellac is a widely available one and when thinned 1:1 with alcohol, you have yourself a sanding sealer. Apply to the wood, let dry, lightly sand with a fine grit, and then stain. You can even repeat the process to get more depth. Experiment with it and see what you come up with. As always, test on a sample scrap before the finished project! If you have any questions please feel free to message us, we always enjoy talking shop.

This might be the longest run of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves we’ve ever built (20’ long and 10’ high). We decided to carry the radiator covers around the entire space to give the room that custom look. Can’t wait to see what it looks like when the homeowners complete the renovation and move in!

We just wrapped up installing this lake house kitchen that features a very unique island table set. The owner has a love and appreciation for wooden boats so we decided to incorporate that into our design. More pics to come when it’s complete! Mahogany and maple.

Wainscoting is a classic wall treatment that can add a lot of visual interest to an otherwise regular room. Give us a call if there is an area in your home that needs to be set apart from the rest!

Finished up this deck project earlier this week. We installed new stairs, decking, railings and a one-of-a-kind pergola. What a transformation!