FYI- I had seen a White Oak floor finished with waterbased polyurethane and it looked as light as Maple flooring. The veins in the wood weren't as prominent, but the floor was very pretty and light. Some flooring companies have samples so you can see what it looks like. If I can remember correctly, we had pine doors and pine trim in our previous house. We had the painters stain them just a touch darker than natural. You almost couldn't see any stain. It looked really nice, but I got tired of the yellow/orange like color. It seems that Oak and pine turn a little more yellow/orange if you leave it natural or don't stain it dark enough. I like both the white or the stained look, but recently I was wondering if a whitish/linen milk wash on pine doors and trim would look nice. I saw this pine wall at Ikea that had a linen color milk wash stain with satin poly over it and it looked stunning. I thought that a thin stain in off white with poly would give it a lighter look (for those of us who prefer natural or ligher wood), with virtually no further upkeep, and the wood wouldn't get the yellow/orange color). I wonder how paint would look next to that type of stain... I think I'll try to experiment with it and see if I would use it when we build our next house. PS-I'm noticing that the green homes around here seem to be going with natural wood (no stains), including the floors and the kitchen cabinets. In light of that, I wonder if white or stained kitchen cabinets will be phased out as the homes go green...

Hi BigDogLover, I'll be sure to get a picture to you at some point when it's done. I'm really excited for how well it'll turn out (Lord willing). The whole thing about pine being soft is an over-generalization. What I've been told is that while we take all species of wood (and there are tons - to name a few of the most popular: white oak, red oak, walnut, ash, beech, maple, cypress, white pine, yellow pine, alder, elm, cherry, hickory, birch, teak, mahogany, cedar, ETC.) and split all those many species into only two categories - hardwoods and softwoods - that it's not nearly so black-and-white; that is to say, there is a much more gradient scale between hard and soft. There are several different species of pine out there, some of which are quite hard -- and southern yellow pine (often referred to as just "yellow pine" or "southern pine") is one of the hard ones (it's over twice as hard as eastern white pine, which is what most people are picturing in their mind when thinking of easily-dented "soft pine"). When people start poo-pooing pine, I tell them what I just told you, and I remind them that the entire framing structure of a house is pine, and pine has been used for flooring and exterior siding and lots of other uses for centuries, and holds up very very well (if maintained properly, which applies to almost any wood). The floors in my house, which was built in 1938, are southern yellow pine (it was at that time, and still is now, very abundant and thus affordable), have never been refinished or really even maintained, and they look great. If I look half this good when I'm 70, it'll be worth drinking to. By "hack traditional", I'm referring to a pet peeve of mine whereby fast-talking sharp-accent rich folks from New York and New Jersey and Michigan and the like, move here to the South - and then, with zero regard to tradition or rural identity or historical integrity - they build a huge modern house that clashes with all the antebellum and mill-era homes that make up the traditional Southern landscape - and they think it's "Southern" because it has a wraparound porch. I'm talking about the people that weren't born or raised here by parents born and raised here - the people who have no real understanding of the fact that this is a region of the larger nation which has its own cultural and architectural identity which ought to be faithfully preserved. The people who see the South simply as a warm, relaxed, "country" sort of place to be exploited and built-up. I find it offensively condescending that rather than seeing me and where I come from as a distinct culture that ought to be respected, that we're viewed as a commodity that can be marketed (I'm picturing that "Luzianne authentic Southern iced tea" TV commercial with the disembodied ceiling fans, and Cracker Barrel, and my blood's about to boil). People don't seem to grasp that everyone with a high-stress job in some dirty city up north wants to come to the warm rural South to relax out in the country - but if enough people do that, you don't have a "country" any more...rural becomes suburbia really quickly, and that destroys the character and feel of the place, not to mention drags along the noise and the crime and the filth and the various other associated problems, and drives up our tax rates, etc. I've seen a tobacco field outside my front door for decades, and I'd like not to see it poured over with concrete and some "planned community" of big 2- and 3-story vinyl-clad cookie-cutter houses with the wide sidewalks and the manicured shrubbery and the BMW and Mercedes SUVs in the driveway, pop up. ANYHOW, sorry for going off on a diatribe for that long. It's a touchy subject for me. My family fought and died here, and I have a heritage and a connection that I deeply care about, and I stiffly resent the encroachment of rich non-Southerners and their big ugly greedy houses and their reprehensible lifestyles. They are to me what illegal Mexican immigrants are to Mr. Lou Dobbs. And in another meaning, when I say "hack traditional" - speaking purely in the architectural sense - I'm talking about folks who claim to want a "Southern traditional" or "Southern country" home - and yet they put in double-pane vinyl or aluminum-clad windows with the fake divided lites, and pre-finished hardwood flooring, and rocker switches, and vinyl siding, and hollow- or engineered-core or MDF doors, and a popcorn ceiling, and computerized kitchen appliances, and faux paint finishes on the walls, and new furniture with a "distressed" (read: fake) finish, and foam or no door and window casing, and roofing that isn't either 3-tab asphalt singles or 5v-crimp metal, and a walk-in pantry with a glass-panel door that has the word "pantry" etched on the glass with a picture of a wheat sheaf, etc. etc. etc. - I could list dozens more examples - there is a difference between real and pretend, between genuine and fake. When I say "traditional", I actually mean it. Not new mass-produced cheap garbage made artificially to look old, and modern architectural details which are in no way traditional or uniquely-Southern. I'm going to shut up about this now before I pop my aorta. Back to the original topic: yellow pine makes an excellent floor. And if you put the right type of finish on it, it has a beautifully warm glow to it and will hold up very well to normal usage (i.e. not doing the can-can on it while wearing steel-spiked golf shoes) -FaSoLa

We have white oak kitchen cabinets with a very light stain. Our house was originally built with white oak floors, which we thought were red oak. We had to replace quite a few boards and we used red oak so now we have a red and white oak floor (definitely by accident). I'm with you on the white oak being nicer. Despite the efforts of our floor refinisher, the red oak still has a pinkish cast to it. In order to make the white and red oaks really blend, we would have had to go with darker stain on the floor, which we didn't want. Have you checked local cabinet makers for prices for white oak cabinets. We found that some could only get red oak and others could only get white oak. The guy who could only get white oak wasn't any more expensive than the guy who could only get red oak.

Now that Sherwin Williams was brought into the discussion... If you go to a Sherwin Williams store during non-peak business hours, you may be able to get someone to work with you on a custom stain color while you're standing right at the desk. Downside is that most of the reps are better with paint than stain (more practice) but they can start with a clear base and sneak up on the color you want if you provide samples prepared just like the ones going into your home. Not sure how well that will work for you since you'd be dependent upon the rep's skill. I usually stay during the mixing process and instruct them about which pigments to add. Visually breaking a wood-tone stain color apart into its primary colors takes experience.