traci29, Congrats on making it to floors! I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can: 1. we used an oil based stain. We used Bona drifast stain and Bona mega poly (water based). 2. We used 3 coats of poly, although Bona says 2 coats is enough. It's been tough as nails. Really pleased with it. We sanded and stained on Saturday, then first coat of poly went down on Mon am--I'd say about 40 hours before the first coat of poly. Second and third coats went down on Tuesday--one in the am, one at night. The product we used recommended 24-48 hours of drying time for the stain before poly. You should check yours, but one thing I learned from research is that if the stain is not totally dry before the poly goes on, the floors looks bad. I think it's hazy and bubbles, but I don't remember exactly. 3. I'm so jealous of your dark floors!!!I'm sure they'll be beautiful. We live near the beach and the sand blows in all the time---then "sandpapers" the floors as people walk thru, etc. Hence, we went with a medium stain that brought up the grain to better hide the scratches, etc. Oil based poly tends to "yellow" with age--a process called "ambering". I have oil based poly on the bedroom floors and since they're red oak, the yellowing has given them an orange type color--I'm not too fond of it. Hoping to avoid that with the water based poly. But with your dark expresso, I don't know if it would make any difference in color. If you post over on the kitchen forum there are lots of people who've put in gorgeous dark floors recently--hopefully they can give you some advice. 4. In terms of moving back in, the Bona website gave us specific direction. We could walk on it the day after the final coat of poly (socks, no shoes, and definitely not bare feet since the oil from your feet leaves a residue--who knew??). We waited a week to put furniture back. Rugs are the toughest thing on the new floors, and since most of our furniture is on rugs, we waited the full week. I think I got them all, but if you have more questions ask away.

Hi aztcqn: Agree that corn-fed, zero-sun, and hormone & antibiotics injections mess up milk. Same with soy: we eat tons of soy in Vietnam: soy milk, tofu everyday, and the skinny Buddhist monks there eat soy daily since they are vegetarians. No one ever have a thyroid problem in Vietnam, and the soy back then WAS NOT GENETICALLY MODIFIED, nor doused with pesticides like the soy in America. I did a thread on the problem with soy in Organic Rose, where I dug up research on carrageenan additive in soy which irritate the body, that's the same stuff they add in ice-cream & coffee creamer. Carrageenan is inflammatory to the thyroid. Also the aluminum equipment they use to press soy in making tofu. raise the aluminum levels to brain-damaging level. I stopped eating tofu after I posted that in Organic Rose. My Mom's tofu in Vietnam tasted yummier, because she used Organic, non-genetically modified soy, plus she used stones to press tofu, rather than aluminum. I use soy products for my entire life, but stopped for a few years 2013, 2014, & most of 2015 when genetically-modified soy-milk with added carrageenan upset my stomach greatly. I came back to soy late 2015, after they take out carrageenan, and the SILK Organic soy is certified 100% non-genetically modified. I get my thyroid tested yearly for decades: zero problems. My kid's friend who drinks 3 glasses of cow-milk per day is tested hypo-thyroid, and is on thyroid medication. My kid had the WORST time ever on cow-milk. She was a happy kid, being fed with soy-milk after 3-year-old (I breast-fed her before then). When she reached puberty (11 year) .. that's when we took her off soy, and put her on cow-milk, plus plenty of ice-cream. Her hormones went out of whack with the many hormones added to cow-milk. She got depressed, she grew body hair & acne, her period was heavy, diarrhea & stinky gas, horrible mood-swings with crying, her blood test showed high-testosterone. We put her back on soy-milk late in 2015: big improvement, body hair & acne reduced, less mood-swings & crying. She's happy & energetic, her grades shot up. we use non-genetically modified, no carrageenan ORGANIC silk soy. Her thyroid is always normal. What I like about soy-milk is IT'S CLEAN, I can rinse the glass off, and it's not stinky like cow-milk. Soy milk doesn't have added hormones, antibiotics, or pain-killers nor contaminated with feces and pus (from mastitis, UP with Monsanto hormone). With cow milk, I have to wash with serious-soap twice to get rid of the stinky smell, very much like chicken or eggs. Cow-milk is allowed by the FDA to contain added hormones, plus a % of feces and pus. The safest milk is coconut milk ... my kid used it before with zero harm on her hormones, but coconut milk has no protein to fill her up for breakfast like soy milk. We need protein & fat in our cold zone 5a, when it gets down below zero in the morning. Sometimes I mix 1/2 coconut milk and 1/2 soy milk, to get both fat and protein. Some cow-milk also contain antibiotics, see excerpt from Time Magazine, March 2015: http://time.com/3738069/fda-dairy-farmers-antibiotics-milk/ "Milk intended for commercial sale is tested for six commonly used antibiotics, NPR reports, and any shipment that tests positive for drug residue is barred from ever making it to the supermarket. Because of that, farmers only use antibiotics on the dairy cows when the cows’ health requires it, and they put those cows’ milk production on hold. The FDA has learned, however, that some farmers use antibiotics that aren’t even intended for cows because the drugs go undetected by these tests. The agency studied milk from close to 2,000 dairy farms, roughly half of which were under suspicion, and half of which were random samples. More than 1% of the under-suspicion group, and .4% of the other samples, tested positive for six antibiotics not FDA-approved for use on dairy cows."

The demo has started and I'm so relieved to report that we've been able to keep pretty much all of the dust out of our upstairs living area! Due to time and budget, we weren't able to put in place all of the controls I'd originally planned but here is what's working: Tape plastic sheeting over all doorways to/from construction area. The sheets of poly have been, by far, the most effective dust control we've put in place. VERY impressed with how simple and effective the poly sheeting has been! We used heavier poly for the areas that would see more traffic (e.g. over doorways, our fridge) and the light stuff for items that won't be touched (e.g. window coverings, furniture). Use zippers for doorways we still need access to. We also put one zipper wall at the bottom of the stairs and another at the top of the stairs. With that double layer I didn't have to cover up each bedroom door upstairs nor cover/pack up all our items upstairs... thank goodness!! Direct a fan outside to create a vacuum to pull dust out. This helps A LOT during very dusty work like demolishing our floor tile. I just used an old stand up fan that I no longer needed. Sweep and vacuum with a shop vac as often as possible. Pack up as many items as possible and cover/tape up anything that has to remain. So far our poly sheeting has held up very well. Even strong gusts haven't ripped them off the walls. It was very time consuming to put up but SOO worth it. We first applied painters tape to the walls/ceilings. Then we stuck the poly to the painters tape using contractor's "technical tape". Here in Canada the brand we use is Tuck Tape. I believe in the US Tyvek tape is equivalent? I hope this helps others also having to live in their reno.

Great ideas! We opted to start in the spring so that we could use the bbq. But we started planning in November. That gave us a lot of time to think things over, get ideas etc. Before we got to the point of having to make decisions, we knew that we wanted plain slab doors with no hardware and we wanted them to be white. We also knew that we wanted to redo the wood floor to match the rest of the house. And that we wanted to convert the window to a bay and bring it down to counter height. We used all of the time in between November and April to make decisions about counters, backsplash (like beachem, we dislike subway tile, didn't want grout and wanted something clean and simple so this left us very few choices to worry about) sink, faucet, appliances etc. By the time they actually got started, we had pretty much decided on everything except the exact look of our glass backsplash. It was a little stressful not having a kitchen, but I could bbq, cook in my Breville oven and we had a cheap microwave. We also went out a lot. Since we had everything decided before starting, when all of those stressful little details unexpectedly came up, we only had to deal with that and it was't so bad. We also used a contractor that we trust 100%, having worked with them multiple times, and had a project manager that we had worked with before and really liked and felt comfortable with. That was a HUGE help, as I was totally confident asking his opinion and also telling him when we didn't like something. But knowing that no matter what might go wrong they would make it right really put our minds at ease, and if I had to point out one thing that really reduced stress for us, it would be that.