working with pine wood,,

[jeff oldham]

i hope someone can help me,,i made a kitchen island for my son and he wanted it with a walnut finish on it,,,personally i dont like a dark finish on pine,,but thats what he wanted,,lolo,,so i got some wood pre stain and put it on first then applied the stain,,,needless to say it looks bad,,so we decided to paint it it using a airless paint sprayer,,i sanded the wood to 120 grit and used mineral spirits to clean it up with,,i was wanting to use water based paint so clean up would be alot easier,,,do i need to put a primer on it first before painting and do i need to sand some before i put the paint on it,,,and can anyone tell me a good paint to use thats goes on good and lays flat,,

[Ron Citerone]

I would prime with Kilz oil based or Zinnzer b1n.

[Jim Becker]

ABout the only way I'd try to put a dark finish on pine would be to embrace an opaque or almost opaque stain (probably something originally intended for exterior use) or just paint it. Since you decided to go the paint route, I will say "yes" to priming it and you can enhance the final result by using a tinted primer. If you don't want evidence of knots, etc., that pine features, something like the Kilz that was mentioned is a good idea. My go-to paint for something like this is normally Sherwin Williams ProClassic, but in most cases you can only get lighter tints. Something dark and "walnuty". SW now has an Emerald enamel product that can be good for this kind of thing. If you prefer Benjamin Moore, their Impervo produt is a good alternative to the ProClassic. Both are 100% acrylic paints. BM Advance is also excellent for this kind of project; it has a longer dry time, however, because it's an emulsified alkyd product...kinda like oil based but in a water carrier.