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Flooring Home Decorating Kitchens

Pairing Red Oak Hardwood Floors

5 years ago

We are in the process of opening up our kitchen to living and dining rooms. The living and dining rooms have beautiful old hardwood floors, so we are considering running the wood floors into open concept kitchen to match the floors. We are being told the existing floors are unstained red oak, so can be easily matched. See sample pic. They said the newer floors will change to old floor cover after exposure to sunlight, etc. Is this true? How long will it take?

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SJ McCarthy
5 years ago
OK...you have SOME accurate information and some not-so-accurate. It is probably red oak...but only a lab that does the testing will know for sure (we are 95% confident that it is red oak...the lab will bring that up to 100% confidence).

The FINISH is what is causing all that colour. This is a TYPICAL oil based finish. Oil based finishes turn ORANGE (we call it ambering). The pale wood in the photo (the new sample) is EXACTLY like the wood underneath all that orange finish.

If you STRIP the finish from the old floor you will come up with EXACTLY the same colour as your unfinished sample. Exactly the same colour.

For this reason, we ALWAYS recommend sanding and refinishing EVERYTHING! All at once. Once the new floor is laid, you would be best served to pay the price and have it ALL sanded and refinished in the SAME finish.

That's how you make a new floor look IDENTICAL to the old floor. It is really the only safe way to do it.

If you try to lay the new wood down and then work with a WATER based finish (many people are going this way because the smell for oil based is SO OBNOXIOUS it is NOXIOUS) then you will NEVER match the old to the new. The water based finishes NEVER turn orange.

And that's where the advice/statements from your flooring professional are starting to fall apart. The FINISH is responsible for the ORANGE on your original floor. If you do NOT match the finish, then you cannot expect the floors to turn out the same.

My question to you is: how OLD is the finish on your original floor? If it is 10 years or LESS, then you may not want to disturb it. It still has another 1-2 decades of life in it. You can add in the new floor, maybe stain it a different colour or 'hope for the best' and put down an oil based finish, and then wait until the original floors need a refinishing. That's when you refinish ALL OF THEM.

If it is 15 years or OLDER (closer to 20 years???) then you will want to have a sand/refinish done all at once. Most finishes have a life span of 20-25 years and then they are 'done'.

The age of the finished on your floors will dictate how you go about this. Again, we are trying to get all the wood in the house in the same finish at the same time. That's the goal.
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