Wow! Thank you all so much for responding. All of the kitchens above are beautiful! I'm not concerned any more..I'm going full speed ahead..hehe What would we do without this website...I love it!! I can't wait to post my finished project photos.

I have decided to try again and refinish the floors in a few years after I add new flooring to the main level of my house. So I am going to try to mix a one-coat stain for the stair treads. I'll try minwax red oak and espresso first. I might buy a dark walnut or other dark color stain if that doesn't work. When I refinish, I will probably build new flush-mount vent registers and toss the ones I have. They are not that well made nor structurally strong, especially at the intake. (I keep stepping on the edge of the vent register in front of the patio door and I'm afraid I will break it.) But I will keep the registers I have until I redo the floor. I think I need to frame out the vent openings with mitered floor planks and run the register slats across the shorter dimension. Two more immediate concerns: (1) Stair Tread Project: The varathane water poly on the wood floor is being scratched from the dogs' nails. The scratches are white-ish. I have been letting the dogs play and I need to do a better job trimming the puppy's nails. However I do not want to deal with scratched poly on the stair treads that I will be installing soon. Do the scratches come out when you sand-screen and apply a new coat of poly as maintenance? Or should I use a power buffer? What tool would you recommend? I prefer not to remove the white painted side trim when I refinish the stair treads every couple of years (as necessary) because it will be thin and will probably have to be replaced (and it will be hard and time consuming to cut new trim pieces). (2) Fireplace Project: I will be re-tiling the fireplace hearth this year. The hearth is framed by wood flooring that I just refinished, and will refinish again. I purchased carrera marble tiles, about 3/8" thick. The marble hearth will be flush with the wood floor. How should I tile this so that the marble is protected when I refinish the wood floor again in the future? I don't want metal edging between the tile and the wood. I sealed the inside edge of the wood floor that surrounds the hearth with poly already, and I won't be changing the color of the wood floor significantly.

OK...here we go. Red oak is, well, red. In fact it sands down to a lovely wheat colour. As soon as anything with 'white' in it is put down, the wheat colour turns to cinnamon/salmon/pink. And that's where Red Oak frustrates both the professionals and the homeowners. Red oak turns pink when gray is used. Why? Because gray is a mix of black and WHITE (oh dear...there it is again...white+red=pink). The other issue with white is it is OPAQUE (cannot see through it...no light passes through). That means the issue with 'gray' = it is NOT transparent (see through). It is TRANSLUCENT (like paper...you can see light pass through but you cannot see the light SOURCE). The more 'white' you add the more opaque the stain becomes....sigh. So there will be two issues you will be fighting: 1. White + red = pink 2. White = opaque (looks like watery paint) So the end result can be a pinky gray (with hints of lilac) that looks like painted wood. https://www.bona.com/en-CA/Professional1/Hardwood-Floors/Coatings/Stains/Bona-DriFast-Stain---Metropolitan/ All three of your choices CLEARLY SHOW (even in the small swatch on the screen) a pink cast to the red oak. The only one that kills the pink (most of it...but it is STILL THERE) is the Aged Pewter. How? Because it has very little white AND it has a green base to it (green kills red). Whew! You can get rid of the red in your red oak...for a price. You can have the wood bleached. That's another $2-$3/sf of an up charge (consider the average price of a sand/refinish = $5/sf). It adds several days to the project and it will damage the wood....but you will get the grey tones you are looking for without pulling all the pink/lilac/purple tones.

Sooo new issue - staining the bannister/baluster to match. Painter is here (flooring guys don't/wont do it) and even though he waterpopped the wood, the stain is going on much grayer than the color of the floor. I don't know if it's the amount of water he used (too little), the application technique (damp rag), the lack of drying time (a few minutes!) or what but the waterpopped sample looks indistinguishable from the unwaterpopped - both look grayish. Wondering if I need to bring someone else in to help or if we should try a different stain color blend like weathered oak and bona natural, 1:1. Any thoughts? Also, I'm not thrilled with the sanding job on the baluster - there are quite a few areas where they didn't get the dark stain up, and it's especially bad around the bottom of the newel post. I don't know if this is something I should accept or whether this is subpar work. Would love thoughts from the pros!! Thank you thank you!