We've used the same process Greg uses with success. Pine is a closed grain wood that doesn't soak in stain evenly. Applying a thin coat of water before staining makes the wood "fuzzy" so it absorbs stain better. After water popping we generally do three coats of oil poly. I don't recommend mixing oil poly and water-borne poly though and applying one too quickly over the other might be problematic. Pre-stains are usually sealers that controls stain penetration. Using it on the Pine floor might make the stain more uniform but I think it would also make it much lighter.

White Pine is a beautiful flooring. The only downside to this is the hardness rating (only 420 Janka Rating). This means that if there is high traffic it will most likely get many scratches. Its good that is a light colored wood because scratches are less visible on light colors. If your looking to spend up to $4 per sqft I would suggest going with something harder. The options available in light colors are Hickory (1820 Janka) and Maple (1450 Janka), two of the hardest domestic species available. These are both very similar to what your looking for and they both come in rustic or natural grade. Often times in the wood business you get what you paid for, but once in a while you can find a great lot deal. Since your buying roughly 1000 sqft, remember, most stores will offer a bulk price.

I also have them, and mine are 160+ years old, and original to my structure. A couple of thoughts: For many years (in the grand scheme of things probably half, or more, of the life of these floors) they were covered with floor cloths of one sort or an other, so it's hard to judge how they would look if they were exposed continuously to the kind of bare floor use that is the modern fashion. Another thing to think about is whether the wide boards you're thinking of are actually old growth boards or more modern boards. Old wood (harvested more than 150 years ago) is much denser than most wood available today because the crop cycles on modern forestry are much shorter. If you are using reclaimed boards, this may or may not be a factor, depending on when the boards were harvested. Another thing to think about is what if anything the effect of a floor finish might have for you. You asked about scratching ..... except for a dog really clawing at the floors you are really asking about potential damage to the finish, not the boards. Modern finishes (I'm thinking of the varieties of polyurethane) may be damaged by dog paws and walking, no matter what kind of wood. (I recently owned a house with modern strip oak, covered with a fine quality modern finish and the dog in that house damaged the floors at the doorways. OTOH, I have dogs and cats in my farm house, with bare, unfinished old floors and see no damage.) Some of us with old wide board pine have *no* finish on our floors out of choice. This probably looked bad fora period when the floors were new, but now, the wood has acquired a patina and a hardness so it doesn't show damage like like a new floor would. If you bought old wood that was re-finished as part of the salvage operation, you would have essentially newly finished wood, with all it's pitfalls and potential for visible damage. I just wanted you to know that it's hard to compare old, aged-in-placed, floors with newly created floors, even if made from reclaimed wood. A middle ground of floor finishes for old wood (between bare and poly) would be treating it with a pure tung oil finish, with or without a wax top coat. The tung oil oxidizes and provides a protection that is renewable; the wax protects the tung oil and lengthens the time between renewals. Both can be reapplied in worn areas without doing the whole floor. Both are traditional practices, with long history of use. Tung oil has it's detractors, because it is stinky to apply and, some say, environmentally bad to live with. (Frankly, I find poly awful to live with from an outgassing point of view, as well.) The one uncontested catch with both (and particularly so with wax) is that if you apply them, you can not then switch to a poly product without resanding the floor to bare wood. And some people say, even small vestiges of wax in the subsurface pores and cracks will interfere with good poly seal, forever. My choice would be to go with tung and a wax top coat, if I was inclined to finish my floors. If you're buying reclaimed wood, they may (or may not, I've seen them both ways), come prefinished with a poly seal, so your finish choice would be made for you.

In my 100 year old attic I've painted the floor in one room a light caramel colour and it looks very good. In the other room it's neon green, which meets my needs in there but is not everyone's taste. I used glossy paint in both cases. It feels nicer underfoot than flat floor paint, and shows off the contour of the floorboards. I filled between the boards too. KarinL