If you want to stain this piece of furniture prior to applying varnish or polyurethane, plan on spending a lot of time on it.For a whole variety of reasons, I had a lot of trouble controlling the color in the application of a darker stain to the wood. I finally managed to get the result I was looking for, but not before spending hours and hours in research and experimentation.I received the unfinished International Concepts 647 Mission Printer Stand and its' larger cousin the International Concepts TV-28 Mission TV Stand, in good condition.The contents of the packages were in great condition and no parts were missing. Assembly was easy. The shipping for these two products, which I purchased on amazon.com, was fast.Mission furniture should be a darker color. However, I was absolutely baffled as to how I would infuse color into the wood, since it was almost white. I decided to try Minwax Polyshades because I had used the product before with good results.However, several attempts to use Minwax Polyshades for a darker finish as a stand-alone application for this project produced results that were pretty much unacceptable.Here's the way I ended up finishing these two pieces:With each of the stands disassembled, I sanded down each wood piece with a medium grit sandpaper. After that, I stained each piece, allowing the stain to penetrate the wood for about an hour before wiping off the excess. I then let the things dry for a few days. My advice: Don't bother with a second coat because this sort of wood won't absorb anything after the first coat.After the stain was dry, I rubbed each of the pieces down with a dry cloth. Stained wood will tend to get darker when a finish is applied, but I still was not satisfied with the color's shade. To put more color into the wood, I used a mixture of Minwax Polyshades and Minwax Polurethane over the stain, as a hard finish.One of the sales people I talked to at Sherwin-Williams told me that I could tint the polyurethane by mixing some stain in with the poly, but I thought it would be safer to use the polyshades for that purpose.Trying to infuse color into this sort of Oak was a lot of work, much more that I expected. If that's the way you want to go, try to remember that sanding the wood first is the key to a successful stained finish. Since this wood was sanded to a fine finish at the factory, there really isn't any way around it. You'll have to sand it to open the pores in the wood.