Hi Anna,

Greetings from a former horrid bright orange old high school gymnasium -floor owner! Trust me, I get it.

Unless the resolution is wrong on my new laptop, your floors look fantastic!

Here is a pic from the old listing photo of our NYC condo, before our gut renovation.

I don't see any gold on the final product. It looks great with the walls and the trim. It has a subtle color. I know yellow and it is not on your floor.

As others have posted, that is not a golden oak finish by any stretch - it looks pretty much like natural oak which has the brown undertone versus the golden tones of even natural finished red oak.

Did you sign off on the stain? Are you reacting to the variation in the depth of the stain?

I had considered white oak for floors but decided against it for my floors because I didn't want as true brown as your picture and opted for natural red oak as a contrast to my white oak cabinetry.

Ohhhhh....the pillow photos is NOT an inspiration photo as I had originally assumed. It is your FINISHED floor. Oh well. That's different.

There is NO yellowing here. None. The 'blonde' you are seeing is coming from PLANK variation and NOT the Mega.

Your FLOOR has a character grade plank presentation. That means TREMENDOUS amounts of variation from one plank to another. This plank variation WILL CAUSE this type of movement (blonde plank sitting next to a mushroom brown plank sitting next to an ash-gray plank). This is the fault of the WOOD, not the stain nor the professional.

I agree that it doesn't resemble the 1ft x 1ft stain patch. I get that. But if you look carefully you will spot small areas on your floor that are almost identical to your stain patch. Those areas also happen to be areas that have planks that are identical in presentation (just like the stain patch area that had identical planks sitting next to one another).

I'm sorry you do not like the finished project. It is a handsome floor - but not a gray floor. It is not 80's golden oak. The ambering or STRONG yellow you mentioned in other posts is NOT there.

The gold streaks (very pale planks) have nothing to do with the stain/finish combo. It has everything to do with the wood used in the original flooring. The floor you have simply has TREMENDOUS amounts of plank variation. Unless you rip out the floor and install a premium grade oak (no variation, no knots, very tight grain pattering), there is nothing you can do.

Only a stain the colour of black paint would have hidden the plank variation. And that isn't something you were trying to achieve.

There’s a lot of movement in the floor, however, I don’t see any “80’s” golden in them ( whatever that is). I think they look good, maybe you’re focusing on the floors too much, furniture & everything else will lessen that. Btw, too late for you, but I NEVER leave town while work in being done at my house. We just stayed in a hotel while our hardwood floors were replaced. Glad I did because several questions came up during the process.

I will never go out of town again while work is being done .

Variation in color would have happened whatever stain you chose. It's the wood, not the stain.

It's not golden. The problem is that by staining it (any color), it highlights the differences in each board and the fact that the floor is made from lots of little pieces of wood, a low-end mix. There's no reason to have so many 12" long pieces of wood in the middle of a big expanse of floor unless it was cheap.

If you can't live with it and you have it sanded down, leave it natural to minimize the visibility of the jumble of pieces of wood. Me? I'd put a rug over it and live with it.

I think it looks great! I saw a photo posted earlier on the feed and I thought that's what you were talking about. To me, it does not look golden. You could definitely use rugs to off set the color.

Get checked for color blindness. There is no orange in that floor.

Sounds to me like you are not a person who should have wood floors. You seem to have missed the nuance of shading and grain natural wood gives. I see gray, goes PERFECTLY with your cushion. Not even close to Golden Oak that was everywhere in the 80s. Frankly I would choose golden oak over your gray..but to each his own.

Personally, I think it's lovely. But definitely not Golden Oak.

First off I don't see anything wrong but it is your house? The quality of the wood will dictate the finished look. You have a very skinny plank with many shades mixed in which usually means a lower end floor. Think about it, the more time the mfg has to pick and match wood tones the more uniform the floor will look and of course cost.

I am not even sure that is white oak? It can be a stretch of the word as theater are planks that are not white oak and most do not look like white oak.

When you stain wood it will LOOK EXACTLY as it does before the stain but with a different tone. The only way around this is a very dark gel type stain to even out sap wood. You have a lot of sap wood mixed in which again goes back to the quality of the wood. I am in no way saying you have a cheap floor but when you see pics of a perfect grain matched one tone floor it took a lot of money and labor to get to it.

You have a nice floor get the 80's thing out of your head and enjoy.

Can I ask if it looks the same on your monitor as it does in real life? What color is the sofa cushion?

If, you wanted to maintain the stained look. You should have asked for Bona Naturale. It has white pigment in it. It would not show too much yellow.

What kind of stain was applied?

I know this doesn't help, but I really like your floor.

It helps a ton finallyhome. Thank you so much.duraseal stain weathered oak and half classic grey was used with Bona mega water base. I asked to Be sure it wouldn’t amber and if we needed Bona clear or a tannin blocker .:(

Penny design : sofa is a Greige .

To be clear , I love the variety of wood and different shades and colors . What I don’t like is the carmel (I called it yellow, sorry ) when our sample was a more light brown Greige . I was going for a European oak feel . It looks pretty coastal , so I am trying to look at it as coastal . Thank you to all the sweet people on here . It makes me feel better .

Okay, so to me on my monitor, the sofa looks silver...

Your floor looks really lovely if it's any help. So many floors that are stained neutral turn out to be a bit cold looking in my opinion.

Also the color will change a bit...

I obsessed over my stain colors too, but now I hardly notice them, they just are something that keeps me from falling down to the ground. :)

It might be different than what you had imagined but different doesn't necessarily mean worse...