We are having this dilemma in real time. they just stained the 1st floor of our 2013 built home. I wanted to refresh because the kids beat them up with scooters, etc when we first moved in and also the color ambered a lot over the years and was looking VERY orange... so we said let's just do the first floor since the 2nd is in relatively good shape but does have that more warm/amber tone. So now we have a custom blend downstairs going up the front stairs and the existing Early American on White Oak on the 2nd floor. See pics... I thought I could live with it, but now I'm 2nd guessing and wondering if we need to do the 2nd floor too... thoughts, photos welcome!

I am not sure I am totally following you. But will chime in anyway :) When we moved in our house there was awful tile in the entry and indoor outdoor carpeting in many places. There was HW floors in the LR, DR, hallway upstairs and the stairs. We didn't love it so we did not want to match it, but it seemed wasteful to rip it out so we put in what we liked everywhere else. When we took the runner off the stairs the sun had faded the risers terribly. So we stained the risers to match the new floor and the treads still match the floors upstairs. Now to me neither one looks off. They didnt do a fabulous job but it works for us.... Before: Not the best after.... (I can't believe i lived with those blue walls so long.) :)

I like the idea but agree that you need two woods whose grains don't clash. The part painted/part stained look is something we thought about too. Our kitchen currently has an L-shaped set of cabinets along the back wall (the sink wall), and then on the wall opposite the small leg of the L, there's a door to outside, then our range, then a peninsula. So we were talking about making the L-shaped cabinets white with soapstone, and the peninsula quarter-sawn oak with soapstone. Both sets of cabinets would be Mission style. We've kind of put this idea aside because now we're talking about turning that door into a window and running lower cabinets along that wall, so the cabinets would come up to the range on both sides, and we thought it might look weird for there to be white cabinets on the right of it and oak ones on the left. But I don't know, maybe it would look okay. What do you folks think? Have you ever seen a kitchen where two different cabinet colors were separated by a range?

On a contemporary counter-height seating area, I ran flooring up the back of the peninsula (under the overhanging counter) in the same direction it was running on the floor. However, it was bracketed by some drywall on each end because of the design, not on an island where you could see it compared to the cabinet finish. The contractor did not want to do it because he said it was weird, but he liked the way it turned out. (But I am not sure I would like it in direct contact with the cabinet finishes at the corners).