I am in a similar boat, but i am moving into a small apartment and cannot have the dark brown floors that I so desire. I will end up with a medium brown shade, as well, but are you also having the same problem I am that so many shades in the brochure/on the cans look different when applied? I assume you have already looked at DRIFTwood? Can you describe how it looked versus Special Walnut and Early American? Thanks. Thanks.

What did you decide to do? We are attempting to stain our deck this weekend. We had our decks re-stained professionally two years ago. They used Sherwin Williams, Deckscapes semi-transparent. The decks look terrible now. The painter charged me over $5k two years ago and wants to charge $2k to re-do now. The painter had the Sherwin Williams rep out and he did not stand by the product at all. We decided to do it ourselves. We were going to use a Behr solid stain due to CR reviews. Now I'm seeing a lot of people have been unhappy with that product in other reviews. It is so much work; I'd hate to use a bad product. We cleaned the deck yesterday and are planning on sanding and staining today. I was hoping to get some good advice on GW. I'm currently more involved in the kitchen forum.

If you are asking if I used a stripper, no I didn't. Before I even power washed and cleaned, there was barely any stain left. So after washing and sanding there was none of the solid stain left visible. Hopefully that was ok. I started staining today, I did the rails and spindles, and tomorrow I will do the deck boards. Our deck is huge, so I used a whole day on the dang spindles! Based on what I had read I went with one coat, it seems to be just fine as far as color coverage goes. Hopefully it will bead water too. Thanks!

Melissa, pics would really help, including the dining room finish you've referred to. Personally, I'm a very visual person so it's difficult for me to picture in my mind's eye all the finishes and kitchen arrangement to which you've referred. If you don't know how to post pics, look at the "Read Me If You're New to GW Kitchens" thread that is kept on the first page of posts.