Apparently..

Wood stain stains other things too. Like porcelain sinks.

I bought two bare wood shelves several weeks ago and have been waiting for it to get warm enough to stain them. Saturday was the day! I was so excited and stained them a beautiful dark brown. They are going to go in my office.

After working, I took the brush to the bathroom to rinse it out. I rinsed as much of the stain out as I could then started washing the sink. But the brown sludgy stuff wouldn't budge. Uh oh. JM has specifically asked me not to get stain on anything other than my shelves (like he had anything to worry about?!). I quickly shut the bathroom door and told JM I needed to run to Home Depot to get some paint thinner to clean my brush.

When I got to the Depot, found the paint thinner, and asked the paint people if it would remove oil-based wood stain from my sink. I got a lot of "oohhh, that's not good" and "if it doesn't ruin the finish on your sink" kind of comments. Great. I bought it and went home.

On the way home I was pondering how I was going to get the sticky, brown stain from off my hands. I may be home improvement challenged, but I know better than to put paint thinner on skin. I fell back to my mom's tried and true advice. If it's oil based (grease, etc) dish soap will take it out. I then got to wondering if dish soap would work for my hands, would it work on the sink too?

I got home, grabbed the dish soap and ran upstairs (whew, JM hadn't left the basement). Wouldn't you know it? The dish soap worked on the sink! I had to scrub a bit, but not too bad. And the little bit that I couldn't get off? A tiny bit of paint thinner did the trick.

I am now one home improvement project smarted with nothing ruined to show for it. Hurray!