Issues While Refinishing and Staining Floors
Reemanu
6 years ago
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apple_pie_order
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Refinishing White Oak Floors: Stained or Natural?
Comments (5)They will be lighter for a while when newly finished, but will darken with age. My oak floors are rather light, but were covered in carpet for 75 years, perhaps inhibiting some darkening? Your floors look just like my fir floors on the top floor of my home. I love the variation and the red color- very warm. The floor in my 'office'-bedroom are dark, and I can't wait to refinish them to a lighter color, as they seem to make the room darker....See MoreFloor Staining/Refinishing Questions from a DIY-er!
Comments (101)It’s just the result of a 120 grit. It will allow the dark spots to show through. It’s more porous in those locations. A finer sanding reduces it. Hence 150 or 180 grit. NWFA teaches us to step outside the box every once in a while to achieve a goal. We are not restrained to standard practice. if, you want it lighter, more needs to be done. Otherwise, they will just come in and continue applying the stain. you can walk around with a light to find imperfections and repair before moving forward. You will need to water pop those areas again....See MoreHardwood Floor Refinish with Uneven Stain & Sheen; White Spots; Bumps
Comments (6)G & S, Thank you. When we were talking color, I specified that I didn't want red/orange (or as little as possible). He recommended the Natural Seal saying that it would cut down on the red/orange showing through. The color I chose was a mix: 50/25/25 Jacobean, weathered oak, classic gray. He did samples with natural seal and classic seal and the natural did make a difference in that regard. Of course I had no idea it would cause this issue. The stain was lighter and with more red than the sample demonstrated. So now we're expecting that it will have to be completely redone. Given what you've said, I really don't know what to think about the stain color, now. I don't want a lot of red to show through, and I don't want a super dark floor. Even though the stain was lighter / more red than expected, I would have been okay with it if not for all the other problems going on. Now I am unsure about stain color. Without that natural seal, the floor will look even more red. Thank you again for your help....See MoreHelp! Wood floor issues after they were professionally refinished.
Comments (13)I like to make analogies between my old house and an old man or woman: Getting 50 or 70 year old wood floors refinished is like bringing a middle aged person home from the hospital and giving them PT until they spring back like new. Getting 140 year old floors refinished is like bringing a 90 year old person home from the hospital and needing round the clock care and knowing you might have to call in hospice. I owned a home with 160 year old floors. The honest and good floor refinishers I spoke with told me I needed a flooring restoration professional, not just a refinisher. I got enough quotes and people to look at them that I could tell who was going to do a crappy job and who was going to turn me down because they couldn't do a great job with what was there. None of the top notch restoration pros wanted to do my medium sized home in the city as most did massive projects on gigantic historic estates out in the burbs with tremendous budgets. They were usually hired by architectural firms and contractors who specialize in this. Our floor had splinters, gouges, nails, you name it. There was not much left to be sanded and little gloss left on top. Many who came to give me a quote said it needed to be replaced, which kind of killed me, and I never had the heart to do it. Unfortunately, it took me until we were staging the house for sale to find a good solution: I had leftover milled planks of heart pine from the 1850's that I had used for our kitchen floor. A handyman used the extras to cut in patchworks to the really damaged areas. I then mixed stains to get a good color match and stained the patches myself. (Sometimes you can take flooring up from closets to make patches, but that had already been done in our house and no good closet flooring was left.) I colored in discoloration and gouges with stain pens. It was like a huge coloring book and incredibly meditative and satisfying. I purchased very large jute rugs from Facebook Marketplace that probably "fell off a truck". The colors blended well with my floors, covered the most offending markets, yet still left enough of the historic floors visable to be appreciated. After 9 years of living in a house where I had to tell guests - "Don't take off your shoes or you might get a Civil War splinter!" I was able to now be barefoot in my own home. Ultimately, your pros butchered parts of your floors. But I don't know that someone else would have done a much better job with such soft historic floors, and these folks might not be able to do any better of a job trying to repair their mistakes. And, nobody would have made them look new. You've gotta embrace imperfection when you live in a house that is so old. I feel your pain!...See MoreUser
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