If you have the option, I think I would lean toward putting the dark rosewood color that is on the floor onto the cabs, and then refinishing the floor in a light natural oak. I think you said this is one of your options - good luck!

The current floor color is Red Mahogany. Love the color a lot.

The floor wood is white oak. I'm not really a fan of the "natural oak" color. My tastes run to browns with hints of red/purple.

I really like the color in the second pic. I'm prejudiced because we're ending up with very similar color schemes -- granite and walls are blue with slight purple tendencies, light cabinets, dark floors. Keeping my prejudice in mind, I vote with darker floor, lighter cabinet. Does that help?

It does, blue (nice to see you back over here, BTW). I like the lighter on the cabs because I love seeing the grain patterns. It's almost as much fun as picking out fishies and smiley faces (among other things) in my granite.

I think I'm going to have Hubby try his one last thing to see if he can tone down the orange-ness (which really isn't all that bad) then live with it for a few days to see how I feel about it.

Pbrisjar--Give Sherwin Williams stains a try. I think you'll have better results. I just used some on my windows (pine) & the SW seemed a lot more saturated than Minwax.

pbrisjar: "brown" stains either have red or yellow in them. One creates the red/brown like the floor and the other will be the gold/orange. You can "neutralize" the brown by locating a stain that has grey in it. The stain appears to be a standard brown; you don't see literally grey in it; however - it will not turn the cabinet wood red/orange or gold/orange.
An example of what I am describing can be seen on a cabinet website. Go to www.kitchencraft.com and look at cabinet door styles and colors. The color on the web site is "Tuscan". You can also consider putting a "mocha wash" over the basic brown stain to enhance the door style of the cabinets. Tuscan type stain is a color that would blend with what you are trying to do and create more of a "furniture" feel to the wood vs. "I'm a brown stained wood cabinet".
Just a suggestion.....

ci_lantro: You're not the first person to say that. I keep on trying to convince Hubby that Minwax stains are not the best but he's a HD shopper and that's what they have. I did get him to try some varathane stain when we were looking at choices for the floor and he didn't like those at all.

tedebear - Hubby is dead set against washes / glazes. We've been that route with the first staining attempt. All the reccs were to do a glaze and he just wouldn't buy it. He read that they're used for "antiquing" and now that's all he has in his mind. He also read that the Victorians used it to make their good wood look cheap. He hates the distressed / antiqued look. Pity as I rather like it and considering we're doing raised panel doors I think it would look nice.

The Tuscan looks rather red on my monitor. I do like it with the mocha glaze, though.

It sounds like you are getting close to what you were shooting for...lighter cabs/darker floors, visible grain, less orange. Do YOU like it? That's what really matters!

fyi, I was told by my local HD paint dept. manager two days ago that they (HD) will not be carrying Minwax products in the near future. I'm guessing that the rep from Minwax hated getting that news.

Sandy

Sandy - did he say why?

So update: Hubby did some staining/rubbing/buffing. It helped but it doesn't make us go wow. We were actually at the lumber yard today picking out the ash wood for our new doors and drawers (as well as enough to do our hall bath and Hubby's parents' kitchen). We saw pieces of real cherry finished and unfinished. The stain does approximate the cab color - we just don't like it.

Next step: We both agree that we like walnut - so we're going to go get some and try that on a test piece of the Ash to see what happens. Hubby is floating around several ideas so no real conclusions yet.

have you tried any stain brands outside of HD brands? I can sympathize with you on your DH feeling that just HD will have what he needs. My DH was never a believer in paint brands making a big difference until the other weekend when we decided to FINALLY paint the outside of the house. I told him I wanted to look at either BM or SW paints. Since there was a SW right up the road (right next to the diner he wanted to go to for lunch) we went in there. AND... since he hates hates hates shopping we just bought it there. He couldn't believe how well it went on and the great coverage. Maybe if you went into SW or somewhere else and if you found the perfect stain color just bought it and brought it home to try? As an FYI to all.... my DH just asked the clerk in the store for a contractors discount and we saved $13 a gallon.

As an alternative... since tedebar suggested about the gray undertone in stain to counterbalance the orange (thanks for that... love learning new things); have you try mixing some Minwax stains yourself to come up with a color you love? Maybe adding a tad of an ebony color would bring you up to the color you want?

Stain taked differently on different woods .If you don,t mind going alot darker you could just cover over the lighter stain with a darker one.I did that with my window seat and it worked out really well .I covered pecan with mehagany and it worked out really well.

Sounds like you are on to trying next steps, so I'll wait for the next update. But I did want to say that I just went through a similar thing re-finishing the floor in a room semi-connected to my in-progress kitchen. I was fighting minwax stains and ended up having to sand the floor down to bare wood _again_. In the end I love it more than any of the other wood floors in the house. You'll get there. Have faith!

smilingjudy: we've had the wood floor back down to bare two times now (and a third to come) - did you stick with Minwax or go another route?

remodelfla: We did try some varathane stain and Hubby seriously disliked it. Hubby does not want to mix stains as he's concerned about getting the formula precisely right for additional batches. Eh, we'll see,