Old thread but I wanted to update...we chose the laminate for the master. And I'm sorry. Not sorry that the carpet is gone, the laminate is a good improvement but I wish I had gotten wood. When he was doing the floor Dh said, this laminate is nice, let's put it all over the house...I don't know why but I said no, let me live with this a few months first. One good thing, we can (and have) moved furniture all over, around the painter, etc and it's not been a problem, no scratches. Brutuses, I haven't kept up, are you in your house yet? And how do you like your floors, if you're in? Susan

I know youÂve already decided to paint it, but I will say something in case some future person is looking for info. The "carved" detail did not take stain because it is resin or plastic, not wood. I thought this was likely as soon as I saw the closeups. DonÂt think modern cheap plastic, think Bakelite. I have an oak piece with resin details so learned a bit about it that way. It had been in my grandparents basement, painted for decades, and my Mom had it stripped for me. She remembered that it was oak underneath. When I first saw it stripped and went to stain it I realized the elaborate parts were not wood. I asked her about it and she explained that this was pretty common, that most pieces at that time were stained dark and then it was easy to mask that those parts were not wood. A certain class of furniture had these (~ first couple decades of 1900Âs) to imitate the wood carving that would price it out of the reach of the middle class. You could post your pic on the antiques forum and more people could tell you about it, IÂm sure. To make a long story short(er), the resin does not take stain because it is not porous. There might be another approach, but what I did was to stain and varnish the whole piece first, then apply a glaze over just the resin details. Allow plenty of time to dry (again, not porous) then top coat with varnish.

Thank you peyton. All we did on the knotty pine tables was to use a furniture refinisher to remove the poly coat and then cleaned off all residue. Grabbed a can of Minwax water based stain in walnut and a somewhat good paint brush. We were originally hoping on a standard stain look, but the stain didn't soak in the wood like it should have. I'm guessing because it was the furniture refinisher and the water based did play well together. So while the stain was still workable/wet, I started playing with the brush to give it a faux wood look. For the burled wood I squiggled it in very small circles. For the zebra wood on the legs I used a one of those cheep chip brushes both L's and HoDe carries. They're small with raw wooden handles and cost less than a dollar each. After applying a good amount of stain you just pull the brush straight through giving it the somewhat striped looked of he zebra wood. The wenge wood technique is similar to the zebra wood only you paint the base a medium brown first using the walnut water based stain as the grain. Using the chip brush and the stain do shorter choppy strokes giving a more wenge wood look. I'll see if can have our daughter take pictures of the small tables since they were given to her for her first apartment. If not I'll try and remember to take pictures when she brings them home next time she comes as she doesn't want to take them when she moves to Hawaii in June.

idrive65, Adorable model, what is your Dogs name and breed? Do you have to keep the toenails trimmed, how do you keep them short? We have two miniature poodles and a Collie and are concerned about adding a hardwood floor to the Kitchen. Even though we think that it will look great with the white cabinets and be much more comfortable than our hard tile floor! Is this White Oak barn wood a hard or soft wood? Your floors are beautiful, where did you find these and are they expensive? We live in the Mid-west, are these rare? Thank you for sharing! roseofblue Aw thanks. The pup is supposedly pure Labrador retriever, but we got him third hand and he's a mighty skinny specimen for a lab. I don't trim his nails as often as I should because he hates it, I do it badly, and twice I've cut him (ouch!) so he runs and hides when those clippers come out. I may try the dremel route mentioned upthread. White oak is a hardwood but not as hard as many imported species, of which there are quite a few between Hickory and the one imported that I listed, Jatoba. (Ipe, used for decking, is 3684 and considered fireproof!) Upstairs we mixed white with red oak and antique chestnut. In one area where dh wheeled on office chair back and forth (!) you can see wear on the chestnut, a little on the red oak, and none on the white oak boards. According the janka scale: White pine: 420 So. yellow pine: 690-870 Cherry: 950 Red Oak: 1290 White Oak: 1360 Hard Maple: 1450 Hickory: 1820 Jatoba (aka "Braz. Cherry") 2350 I agree with all who say the finish matters. The aluminum oxide finishes on pre-finished floors is very durable. Others have site finished with waterlox which is easily touched up as needed, you can search for photos of ccoombs floors for photos of beautiful waterloxed oak floors. My dh owns an flooring company that sells only antique remilled products so he made the floors for us. We actually kept a lot of boards that might be culled for a customer because I wanted a "busy" floor. Thankfully it matches the dog hair and hides the scratches very well!