Furniture for a Friend

My co-worker had a piece of unfinished furniture she wanted me to finish.  Here it is before:

Most of it was just wood but then there were areas that had a white wash on it.  Have you ever tried to sand off white wash?  Oh my.  HATE.  Anyways, she wanted it stained a very dark brown so we used Minwax Red Mahogany stain.  Before I applied the stain (but after I sanded it) I applied a wood conditioner to the entire piece.  I waited about 20 minutes and then applied the stain.  It went on quite well.  The only problem is it took FOREVER.  It has been sooooo hot and humid here and so it maybe that has something to do with it?  I stained it on Thursday and it still wasn't dry on Monday. 

I needed to put another coat on but I didn't like how matte it looked.  I had some other stain in the garage that I had used on a previous project and I decided to apply that over the dark red mahogany stain.  It was Minwax Polyshade, "Olde Maple Gloss".  This did the trick.  It gave it the right amount of sheen.  It will also help when she will have to dust it (ew, dusting).


Here it is all finished: