Unintended Primer Review

I am currently refinishing this sideboard I picked up off of Facebook Marketplace. As I was cleaning this piece, I noticed how much of the red stain or tannin was being drawn out. I used Krud Kutter and the more I wiped it down the more it seemed to pull red color out.

After I cleaned and sanded the piece, I wiped it down again with Krud Kutter and this is what came off; more of the same. I decided to go ahead and prime. I looked around for stain blocking primers and initially decided to go with a water based primer from KILZ called Restoration. The description of this primer, from the KILZ website is:

KILZ RESTORATION® Primer (Formerly KILZ MAX) is a new generation water-based primer, sealer and stainblocker offering performance of traditional oil and shellac-based primers. It tackles tough stains including heavy water damage, rust, smoke, nicotine, grease, tannin, ink, pencil, felt marker, pet stains and more.

Strike One

So after two coats I still had bleed through. Whatever is coming through, Restoration is not blocking it. I actually returned the product.

So after a little more research, I decided to go with a shellac based primer. I was trying to avoid that due to the cleanup needed for that sort of primer. I went with Zinsser BIN Shellac based primer. The description from the website is:

Blocks stains and odors resulting from water & fire damage, seals stains from dark colors, grease, rust, creosote, asphalt, crayon, lipstick, graffiti, markers, knots, sap streaks, tannin bleed, etc.

Strike Two

I sanded down the previous primer and put two coats of the BIN shellac based primer and guess what? Same issue. Same bleed through. And being shellac based, the first coat dried almost as soon as I put it on. Extremely hard to work with in my opinion.

Home Run

I was at the point of needing a home run. So I had tried a water based and a shellac based primer with no luck. I tried one more primer, another Zinsser product called Cover Stain, which is an oil based primer.

The description from the Zinsser website is:

Use it to block stains, hide dark colors, prevent tannin bleed and penetrate and seal exterior wood.

As you can see from the very boring picture above of the top of the sideboard, there was absolutely no bleed through. Finally, I was able to prime the entire piece with no bleed through anywhere, and it only took one coat. I find it interesting that all three product descriptions were basically the same but only one worked in my situation.

I didn’t start out to do a primer comparison and this was simply trial and error trying to find one that would work for this piece. But in the future if I am working on a piece that has been previously stained, my go to will be Cover Stain.