Love your floors - everyone needs a "pet" board :). My whole house is oak floors and most have been installed in "remodel" and "build-on" phases. My favorite floors are the ones in the original part of the house built it 1970 - just a tiny, cheap little ranch style house (thus the need for building on). They are the 1970 version of "cabin grade" but with very little knot holes. Various wood workers who have been through my home love them - they tell me even though they are supposed to be red oak, there seems to be a mix of some other woods - some are burled, some look like walnut, some quarter sawn, some not. They are interesting. Just wondering, is there an oak that has lots of dark (blackish) streaks?? My newer floors in clear #1 grade oak are nice, but not as interesting.

eastbaymom- your cabs and floors look great, i think you are right, we could go darker but we would lose the contrast, so it just depends on the kind of look we are really going for river spots- we did look at 3 different maple grades at the flooring showroom. we definitely ruled out the grade 3 maple, but liked some of the contrast that the second grade offered. I can see however that the cleanest grade of maple might be considered the most contemporary. another possibility that i kind of like is white quarter sawn (or rift and quartered) oak. That would also fit in with some of the arts and crafts details we have in our home. and that leaves the option to leave it unstained for now and if we ever do remodel the cabinetry to have it refinished and stained darker in the future. I had never before heard of maple being country styled either but no fewer than 3 individuals in 3 different conversations told me that it was. i'd appreciate any other opinions as well as to what other woods/colors would look good with our cabinets. I originally had the flooring quote done in walnut, which i also love, but i'm afraid with my kids being the way they are that the scratches will look awful in a short time frame.

I know this is an old thread but I felt the need to reply. We used Bona Traffic 5 years ago using spice brown stain followed by the Satin poly HD 2 part system. I remember back then it stated the darker color allow 12 hour dry time which we did. Then we applied two coats of finish. I recall that it took longer then 2 weeks to fully set and get solid but eventually it did and worked out great. Fast forward we got a new house. Great wood floors. Again we refinished them using the Bona HD traffic 2 part system in semi gloss. We used a lighter finish this time which stated on the stain can stated to allow 2-3 hours drying time in normal humidity. So this time around we followed the instructions and allowed 3 hours for the stain to dry on a lovely 75 degree sunny day. I did not go heavy on the stain and I would use a dry cloth to buff out the excess as I went along. Everything looked great. We have experience with the sanding so we spent roughly 10 hours using the different grits down to the 100 grit as the final step as instructed. Floors were lovely and down to the bare unadultured wood. We then vacuumed them and got every last bit of dust off using special footies as to not contaminate the floor with our feet. We could not have followed the instructions more perfectly. In fact we researched for a week and spoke to a floor refinishing company just to insure we did things 100% correctly. Well here we are now, 12 days in and I can scratch this off with my nail in many places. I am not talking just a scratch in the wood, but a peeling of the top coat scraping down to and exposing bare wood. I am sick to my stomach. The floor will not last. It is supposed to be strong like for a gym. This would not hold up to a room of infants. We luckily were finishing in a vacant home so nothing was placed on the floor for 10 days. It's not even worth moving all of our heavy furniture and starting over so I am going to put laminate floors over top of this and be done with it. I called Bona and they told me that they suggest 8 hour stain drying time. Well then why the heck would you state on your product 2-3 hours? Human error on my part? I think not I did everything that Bona said. Disgusted with the product. I should have used a cheaper oil base from the big box store. Biggest regret of my life. Perhaps Bona stored the product in a cold warehouse? Maybe it was a faulty batch with bad hardener? I have no idea but it behaves like something that did not have hardener. However I checked the unused bottle the next day and it was solidifying in the jug. Something failed and I can't understand what because I followed Bona instructions to a T.

If you like the current color I recommend adding to it and using an flush divider, which we generally call a header. One advantage of this (besides costing less, being less disruptive and causing less consequential damages) is that in the future the kitchen could be recoated up to the header. Your kitchen will get several times more wear than most areas of the house and will require recoating more frequently. It's often a challenge finding a place to stop the coat that doesn't show a stop-line, meaning that we often have to recoat more area than necessary. If you were more interested in making it perfect rather than acceptable, I would recommend paying the floor guy for the wood he bought, wait until you're ready for a kitchen renovation, lace the wood in at that time and refinish everything. They may not be willing to store the wood so you might need to find a conditioned space to store it. This strategy would also protect you if something on the new kitchen varies slightly from the existing.