Light Spots

Here's some bad news. The mantle may be "ruined". I am sooooo disappointed *sigh*. Basicallythere were several small holes in the wood which is really not a huge deal, I just filled them with wood putty and moved on. The wood putty is made by Min wax which is the same brand of pre-treater, stain and gloss that I purchased. On the back of the stain it says to use pre-stain so of course I did. I think this was my mistake. Last night I used the pre-stain and then the stain, exactly how the package instructs. As it began to dry I noticed that all the parts I had filled withwood putty didn't absorb the stain. On the bottle of putty is says that it is stain able...arg. After looking at the spots closely and feeling them (they are oily) I have decided that its the pre-stain that has kept the putty form absorbing the stain. The pre-stain package and the putty bottle are the same brand (meant to be used together) and neither says anything about not using pre-stain on top of the putty. SON OF A..... Needless to say I was upset. So upset that Matt finally installed my new entry way light that he has been avoiding for months. It cheered me up a bit but come on, I spent a whole week stripping and sanding this damn mantle only to have it look like crap once stained. Matt swears it doesn't look too bad and "hey, it looks way better than it did before". Yeah, not quite what I was going for. I WILL NOT let this mantle win, so tonight I will be sanding down the light patches and re-staining them. I doubt that I will be able to get them to blend perfectly, but hopefully I will be able to make it look somewhat better. Wish me luck! Here are a few pictures of me staining. The stain is extra dark in the pictures because it just went on, it dried a little lighter.

After the pre-stain was applied.

Me applying the stain.

Staining the top.

After all the stain was on, right before we wiped off the excess so it is dark.

The "finished" product...see the light spots? There are tons more too.