Paint over fresh stain?

January 17, 2014 5:53 AM

We have double-glazed wooden oak windows on our house. Due to a combination of language barrier and over-helpfulness, the nice man painting bits in my house has just taken it upon himself to re-stain the exteriors. I actually want them painted white. He says he'll just paint them tomorrow but surely you can't just.... paint white over fresh stain? Won't it bleed through or discolour?
posted by DarlingBri to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

Best answer: Assuming the stain is completely dry (and it may well be, depending how volatile it is), then a good base coat should cover it without any problem. You'll need a base coat anyway when you paint bare wood.
posted by pipeski at 6:03 AM on January 17, 2014

Best answer: What pipeski said. Once the stain is cured it should be possible to paint over it. I'd be more worried that the paint might not bond properly, if the stain hasn't had time to cure fully and he's planning to use a water-based paint.
posted by jon1270 at 6:05 AM on January 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: OK thanks. We've told him to forget the window - he just got the one, so we'll wait a week for it to be 100% dry and I'll do them myself.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:41 AM on January 17, 2014

If it's just stain, you should have no problem. If it's polyurethane over stain, especially if it's gloss, you may have some trouble with adherence. If there's poly you should scuff it up a little with fine sandpaper (maybe 120 or 180), and use primer for your 1st coat.
posted by mr vino at 9:56 AM on January 17, 2014

I don't know about the stained window but when we built our picket fence, the paint store guy recommended opaque white stain instead of paint. It looks a little dingy now but it isn't peeling at all and we painted it 15 years ago. If my windows didn't have a hundred years of paint on them, I'd definitely use white stain.
posted by artychoke at 2:30 PM on January 17, 2014 [1 favorite]