First off---painting oak is silly---unless all the grain is filled. Reason---it simply looks like painted oak---which you have found unacceptable.

Second, to stain, the wood has to be bare--NO finish. Removing finish from trim is more time consuming and expensive than finishing/replacing it.

IMHO, painting oak trim does devalue the property.

Which Zinsser primer did you use? Bull'seye or BIN?

BIN is the better choice for trim.

White trim is traditional and can also be modern. Buying paint grade(the least expensive type trim anyway) pine trim, priming with BIN, and adding two coats of the paint(usually gloss) is the minimum process. Poplar trim can be painted more easily than pine.

Stain grade trim is more expensive(pine wood is difficult to stain evenly). Minimum process for stain grade pine is a wash coat(preconditioner), stain application(preferrable wipe on/off since that allows much better color control), light hand sanding, and several coats of varnish.

Installing trim can be a good DIY project. The list of necessary tools can be as simple as a hand saw/miter box combo(as low as $20), a smooth face hammer($10) , a box of #8 finish nails($4), and a book of installing trim($20).

Or as complex as a power miter saw($200up), a compressor($100up), a finish nailer($80up) learning to cope cut joints(coping saw/hand rasps at $20up) and more.

I have tools worth over $1,000 just to install molding and doors. And some other tools to make molding, if necessary.

Base molding and door molding can be a one person job. Chair rail/crown molding requires two people(or several special tools)

Bad idea. Stop now before you damage the homes value too adversely.

quote"BIN is the better choice for trim."

I totally disagree with this, Bin is a shellac based primer and totally un necessary for trim( unless it has knots in it)

I don't believe painting trim white devalues a home, but you do need to select the correct shade of white. Bright white is not the usual shade found in most homes and you have to consider the color of your walls & flooring when selecting the correct shade of white for your trim.

I suggest you go into Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams and ask for their help in selecting the right paint for the trim. Not all paints are the same and some tend to leave more streaks (even with the best brush) and others set up too fast, leaving little time to work with the paint.
They can also advise you on the prep and which paint brush to use to avoid streaks.

This post was edited by annz on Fri, Jan 10, 14 at 17:30

Um, BIN is a shellac based primer, which means it will cover all sorts of ills that could cause fisheye or bubbling when painting dirty or older surfaces.

It is also less viscuous---meaning thinner and does not blob on, like the water based Kilz or Bulls eye varieties.

I would choose a warm white and figure on 2-3 coats, after the primer coat. Not only will the wood need that, but it will be much easier to keep clean, in the future. You won't want to scrub a streaky paint job...it just takes off more paint. Be sure to let it dry well, between coats.

I'd check with a paint store (or big box paint department) to see which primer they recommend for your project. Invest in good paint, too...if you can afford it. It often makes a huge difference :)

I painted my oak cabinets using BM products and I don't regret anything. I hated my orangy oak cabinets. It was a lot of work though - sand, clean, prime, paint....

I would suggest using BM products (cabinetcoat and advanced paint by BM). There is nothing wrong with wanting white trim. My house came with faux wood color doors and trim. I painted the doors white and bought new trim. I LOVE white over what I had.

Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: DIY cabinet painting

A sloppy job (of anything) will pretty much always lower a home's value. But I disagree that painting the trim white - assuming the job is done well - will automatically devalue the home. Where do you live? In New England, and I'm sure some other areas, white trim is extremely common and many (including me) far prefer it to natural wood trim in most houses. It really depends on what you have to start with. I would certainly not suggest painting the original wood trim in a craftsman bungalow, or other houses where the wood is really a dominant feature. But if you have some other house style, and you do a good job painting the trim (and paint all of it), no future buyer will look at the trim and say, "whoa, someone really ruined this house." They'll just think, "this house has white trim." And either they like white trim or they don't.

I used to live an an old triple-decker apartment in Boston and half the woodwork (including doors) was natural wood. Half the woodwork was painted white. There wasn't any rhyme or reason to it... either at some point someone stripped part of the woodwork and didn't get around to finishing the job, or at some point someone painted half the woodwork and didn't get around to finishing the job. The style of the Victorian-era apartment was one I associate with white trim, but the exposed wood looked great. In that case, my thought was "someone really ruined this place by painting the wood." If I had never seen the exposed wood, it would never even occur to me that it hadn't always been white.

Oh gosh no! 1990s honey oak anything is so unbearably ugly. It looks like something only my mother would love.... of course, she still misses her country blue and mauve decor complete with a wooden goose! Nononono.... PLEASE paint! White is so much cleaner and prettier... unless you have a beautiful historic craftsman style house or something like that. If your house was built after 1970 and it has wood trim, paint it!!!

Ignoring the issues of whether to paint or not. If you are getting too much of the grain showing through (not all oak is grainy, some have quite smooth finishes) then there are a couple things you can try to fill in that grain. If it is fin enough, use sanding sealer then sand it. if there are larger grain pockets, you can probably fill that with painters caulk, just wet a rag and put some on and wipe the soggy film over the wood, wipe off until mostly smooth and sand smooth when dry. The same can be done with drywall mud too, Need to practice though to get a good look and its a lot of work. Insufficient sanding will show through

Frankly, I'd just tear it off, get a contractors pack of new trim and replace it with fresh material. I'm not sure I would try anything but sanding sealer on a large surface like a whole door, The above techniques are best on limited surfaces.