i agree with byrd2park. Sharpie Extreme works great and comes in at least 4 colors if you like that option. I've used black Sharpie Industrial markers successfully, too. I wonder if they are the same formulation, with the Extreme a new marketing angle for labeling sports equipment, etc. The traditional permanent Sharpies fade quickly in some locations. Not so with the Extreme. The popsicle stick idea sounded good to me a few times but turned out badly. Most rotted off or discolored well before I wanted them to decompose. Some hardwood stakes have lasted quite well over a full season, though. Mostly I stick with plastics for labels.

I love a wood floor in the kitchen. We had light stained oak for 17 yrs & it wore well & was not high maintenance to keep it (looking) clean. Our floors are dark now. It is more maintenance but we are empty nesters. Matching your dining room should be doable but it would involve stripping & restaining the DR floor to get a good match with the kitchen. Go out & look at cabinets. Find inspiration pictures you love. Decide on a cabinet and then address the floors. You can save "Idea Books" on Houzz. When you see something about a kitchen you like, save it in an Idea Book. It will save you time later on when you have all those other decisions to make...lighting, cabinet height, moulding, backsplash, countertops, etc. Can you post pictures of your wood trim? You'll get more responses & advice with pictures & when you're up to it, a layout of your current kitchen.

Yes, I confess, I am a closet clean freak. I try to pretend I am not but really I can not help it. I don't love to clean, I just can't relax if I walk on a floor with even one tiny little sand grit on my foot. Even with college roomates I was the girl cleaning at 3 am. While everyone was passed out drunk. I was raised this way. You should see my sisters. We all scrub our floors on hands and knees. No one walks in our homes with shoes on. Every night before bed I wipe down the floors in the kitchen. Maids quit with me they don't get fired. : ) I must be from a long line of cleaning ladies... When I gave birth to my first child, my mother and aunts arrived. My husband was shocked to find one aunt scrubbing the sidewalk in front of our home. She bleached the steps and walkway. It was then DH realized that he married into a family of clean freaks. Sorry to go off topic. I guess this is why the felt pads work for my floor. Or maybe it is me working for the felt pads. > Boxerpups (Yes, I chase dog hair like the rest of the world)

Thanks for all the very helpful comments! I really liked the idea of using shellac and Zinsser SealCoat pre-mixed, dewaxed shellac looked like a really promising product, however, it is super hard to find right now (at least in Canada). It's either a COVID related manufacturing problem, or I think I read somewhere that there was a bad crop of lac beetles...! So I was ready to explore mixing shellac from flakes, but getting the right alcohol was proving a bit difficult too and would all have to be ordered online without the option of doing a small sample first. I was at Benjamin Moore and chatting with the lady who worked there and she suggested a water-based floor varnish by Saman (a Canadian brand I think). Just letting some samples dry right now, but it is looking promising! I'd be happy to hear if anybody else has had experience with varnish, I'm feeling like it might be a "too good to be true" situation. Seems to kind of be like a sweet spot between shellac and polyurethane (although it seems quite similar to poly from what I can tell/read). Because there's big cracks in between the subfloor boards, and nothing between there and the ceiling below, we're putting down an underlayment in hopes of creating a bit of a barrier (in the event of spilling water, for example, it would just go straight down to the ceiling below), minimize impact noise and keep the dust below the subfloor contained. Spent a ton of time researching alternatives to flooring paper underlayment for top-nail, plank wood floors, so just wanted to say thanks to @SJ McCarthy for their contributions on other posts which were very helpful. I've ordered QuietWalk and hoping that will fit the bill. QuietWalk Plus wasn't available in Canada but we don't need any moisture protection from the subfloor so hopefully QuietWalk will suffice. I called the manufacturer and they indicated it should be OK. Eventually we'll probably add insulation between the floors (it will likely have to be blow in from what I understand, since I don't want to rip out the ceiling and the subfloors upstairs can't be lifted because they span across load bearing walls) to help with soundproofing, but hopefully the QuietWalk will help reduce impact noise a bit. My husband and I spent a couple days removing 90 years worth of headless nails and tacks. Now we'll be spending the long weekend steaming the boards to try and close any small holes, then wood filler, making wood plugs, gluing knots and more sanding. Sometimes it seems silly to spend so much time on these low-quality boards, but I like that they're wood from a different era and can't imagine ripping them up and throwing them out. Nova Scotia forests are being clear-cut across the whole province, so I think it's worth the effort to salvage what we have instead of buying new if we don't really need to. Thanks again for the suggestions and feedback!