Me 54, and my DH 63, we too are renovating a 57 year old house! Gutting everything, plumbing, electrical and putting in gas ( previously was oil tank and radiant heated floors!) New kitchen, floors, doors, insulation, everything!! We had no idea what we were in for!! Thank goodness we have a wonderful contractor that renovated my husbands store and so we knew we could trust him with a job this big!! And I am using a decorator to help me put things together! We are living in an apartment ( because we sold our house in 4 days and had to be out) and it is exciting to go over everyday and see the progress !! But we said, if we did not know how good our contractor was, we would be very nervous!! Our house looks like a bomb went off!!Good luck to you!! Try to enjoy the ride!!

I love your warm stained doors and woodwork and I would never paint them. They also look to be in great condition. My doors and trim in my home are done just like yours , stain color and all. It is one of the best features of my home, I think. My front door stained trim is also done just exactly like yours and it looks fine with a large wreath placed on the door. It draws the eye off everything else. The wreath co-ordinates nice with the wood trim. . Once you paint stained wood work there is no going back. Unless you want to rip it all out. Crate and Barrel has some nice wreaths that would look great on your door, in particular their Red Berry Wreath would look nice .

And one more bit of information (sigh...'cause there isn't enough on this thread already - poor thing). Finishes like to have new coats added rather quickly. If a few days or a few weeks have expired between coats, then a HEAVY abrasion+tack cloth (as if getting ready to START the process) is required. When a coat of finish is "fresh" (less than 24 hours old) it has TREMENDOUS chemical grab. It may not FEEL sticky or tacky but the CHEMICALS will bond to one another REALLY REALLY WELL. That's why it is BETTER to get more coats down BEFORE the 24 hours has expired. For a job like this, it would have been ideal to have 1st coat done....then 8-20 hours LATER the second coat....and then 8-20 hours later the THIRD coat down. And ONLY IF a 4th coat were needed would you wait a little bit longer than 24 hours....but you would still want to get it down sooner rather than later. If you wait more than 24 hours then the sanding must be quite aggressive. Why? Because you need to produce a MECHANICAL bond (heavy scratches in the fresh finish = greater surface area = more grab) because the CHEMICAL BOND (fresh chemical laid over fresh chemical) is GONE. As for "high traffic areas" - we would consider a MALL ENTRANCE to be a "high traffic area". It is very difficult to find high traffic areas in a home. But Minwax is the lowest of the low; the cheapest of the cheap so 4 coats in a kitchen would be fine. I have a distinct feeling there are more issues than just the top coat having bubbles in it. I really think there are going to be adhesion issues (two coats of stain is only the first of many concerns). Then the long time between coats. And then the lack of proper sanding between coats (as G&S mentioned, the hand sand between coats isn't going to be enough if there were days between coats and not hours). All scream out "Adhesion Failure" in the near future (could take 6 months....could take 2 years). I would HIGHLY recommend you bring in a professional to give this thing a HEAVY screening/moderate sanding. Remove any of the loose or poorly bonded polyurethane (I would expect 2 of the 4 coats to come off with this screening) and then have the PROFESSIONALS APPLY the final coat of Minwax with the proper tools (T-bar is better than lambs wool and has less waste). This way you will be assured the coats are properly bonded. Anything that is loose will scrape right off. Once it is gone, it cannot cause adhesion failure in the future. Hopefully the two coats of stain at the very bottom of this job won't give you issues. Let's hope.

Thank-you so much everyone for the tips. I think I will try again and remove the pouf and try to incorporate pink. I feel I have consistently fought off pink bc the design I want is more in the neutral tones but the thing is when I use the beiges and browns it simply does not work with these floors. The cost to replace is a lot & i do feel bad to change so soon after i just did them under a year ago! I will try with a rug that is more of a blush/pink tone & and some different accessories. And I will be changing out the light fixtures. I really appreciate the feedback and feel I have to embrace more pinkish tones to make this work better. The photo below is more of the style i want but i feel these are tones that would not do well with my current floors.