The dresser puts on it's new duds

I had some things going for me on the final coat and the coverage was absolute. The previous layer had more time to set up this time. I felt that new coats were melting into the previous ones and getting sticky while being applied but this wasn't as evident with a four day curing time between coats.  I used a foam brush this time too and that seemed to apply a more even thickness.

I would have left it at the third coat with some wood colour showing through but I couldn't get over the fact that it wasn't wood grain but my wiping strokes that were looking like simulated grain. So one last coat and I'm happy. Glossy black was my original intent and it came out that way in the end.  The grain is still visible on close inspection and doesn't look too bad.  There's some evidence of where the poly went on thicker and didn't get smoothed out properly because of the lack of working time.

So my experience with the Minwax PolyShades is that I'm not likely to use it again but it did work.  I'm not likely to try to go for as dark a finish as this again.  There wasn't a net time savings by using the PolyShades but there was a small cost saving.  If the grain matching had been done better on the piece I would have regretted using the PolyShades and going for an opaque finish.

The learning experience was worth it.  Starting with a harder to use finish should make working with a more standard finish seem that much easier.  At least doing stuff the hard way first gives me more material to write about.