Mohawk wiping stain color modification
I need a little advice on a project for my house... I installed prefinished maple hardwood throughout the house. I then had birch kitchen cabinets custom made and ended up going with Mohawk wiping stain in "perfect brown" as it complimented the maple floors very nicely. Now it time to do all my baseboards, window/door casings and doors. Unfortunately, for various reasons, I'll have to use pine for all of this. I realize the grain will never look the same, and I'm ok with that... I just want the overall tone to be right.
I got a can of the Mohawk perfect brown from my cabinet maker, and have done quite a few tests to try and get the pine colour to tie into both the cabinets and floors. Pine being pine, I'm having a hard time getting the tone quite right. I've tried with/without wood conditioner (and leaving the conditioner site for different amounts of time, and multiple coats),and tried leaving the stain sit on the wood for different amounts of time. I went to home depot and bought a bunch of small sample jars of stain from various companies to try and see if a different color might work. But found the quality of all the stains from them to be really subpar... So I think my best bet is to try and tint the Mohawk perfect brown as it's so close... Just seems to be missing a bit of warmth in the color when applied on pine.
Does anyone have any experience adding tint to these stains? What could I use to accomplish this? Is this even the right approach? The stain, as is, is actually quite close, and I'm probably being really picky, but this is going to represent a lot of effort on my part, and I plan to live in this house for many years to come and I really want to get it right!
I've attached 2 pictures (1 with natural light, the other with lightbulbs as the light source) with the flooring underneath, a square sample of the cabinets and one of my test strips of pine. It's a bit hard to see the nuances of the tones in the pictures, but figured I may as well attach it for what it's worth.
Thank you so much for advice you might be able to offer!
