In our current house the previous owner had the floors refinished with a water based urethane. I personally do not like it. It is more of a satin/matte finish. I prefer the glossy/wet look. I do not know how many coats were put on. We installed new wood flooring in the sunroom/back door entrance (was tiled) and finished it ourselves and used Duraseal- poly based. We put quite a few coats on it as that room is the backdoor entry that is used by 2 adults and 4 kids and lots of friends. The floor is just gorgeous. I absolutely love it and when we put hardwood on the kitchen floor and rent the machines again, I am going to hit the other floors and refinish them with Duraseal. I am finding that the water based is not as tough as the Duraseal. We have twin toddlers who spill things, drop toys and it just seems like the finish isn't as tough as a poly finish. It looks like it is wearing in high traffic areas, not down to wood, but the finish is even more matte in the main traffic pattern. I will warn you though that the poly based does have a strong smell. I closed off and actually taped heavy duty plastic up over openings to try to keep the smell isolated to that part of the house.

Love, love, LOVE, the marble. Thanks for posting the extra pictures. I have a little marble in my kitchen and desk area but I really like yours. Our bathrooms are very small (1930's small house) so I only have a tub/shower in the hall bath. The master is a small shower only. That's why I hesitate to take out the only tub in the house. I've just about decided to do it. If it's really wrong I guess I can always have a tub installed when we decide it's wrong. Here are pictures of my kitchen. After seeing your island a different color than the perimeter cabinets I may have to paint mine. I really like yours. I am not really happy with the wall colors in these rooms but haven't fallen in love with a different color so I haven't changed it yet. http://www.pbase.com/cjw/my_finished_kitchen

Ciranova ? Pink Blocker can be used with any competitors brand stain. I have not experienced any issue. You do need to buff with a maroon pad prior to applying a stain with other manufacturer's WB PU. I have not applied any other WB except for Ciranova's own WB PU over Pink blocker. No time for experimenting. Pink Blocker is a reactive stain. It is water soluble. Ciranova has a binder in their invisible line finishes : Ecofix plus, Woodlook Plus and Oculto. It helps prevent reactivating the stain and moving the color around. Reactive stain can be applied after pink blocker. Still needs buffing with maroon pad. You can use the regular reactive stain on red oak. It will not be as intense as if, it was applied onto white oak. Aquavintage is a two part reactive stain. hardwax oil , oil poly or wb poly can be applied. If, using WB poly, use one of Ciranova's invisible poly. Ecofix for light natural colors. Woodlook for whites and grays and Oculto for dark tone reactive stains. It is water soluble, competitors WB PU will move finish around. If, you want a WB system that looks like a oil finish. Ciranova's invisible line is what you want. It will look as natural or raw as can be with the protection of a WB system. For added protection, you can do two coats of their invisible finish and two coats of Fortico. Fortico is comparable to Bona Traffic HD and Loba's Supra AT. You can top coat Ciranova's invisible finishes with competitors WB finishes. That will help keep cost down. Only downside, if, you run into issues. The tech support will not help you. Use your own discretion. Unico is the same as RMC. It's a single coat oil system with the added benefits of being able to apply a WB PU over it. It's soft, top coat with one coat of Titan or two coats of Fortico for the added protection. Titan is better than RMC. Note: every manufacturer alters their binders slightly in their finishes to make it unique. It creates issues with other manufacturers products. You would need to test samples to make sure there are no finishing issues. I have used Ciranova's reactive stain with RMC and Pallmann's oil with no issues. I have tried applying a competitors WB PU over Ciranova's reactive stain with no success. It moves the color around. But when used with Ciranova's invisible PU, no issues. You can apply dewaxed shellac over the reactive stain and apply a competitor's WB PU or just apply oil base poly. Keep in mind oil base poly will turn yellow. For aged look, it does not look good. If, you want the aged look use Ciranova. you won't be disappointed, unless your guy does not know how to use it. For a stained look, you can use any other brand. The colors are all the same, besides Duraseal, which has more colors available than anyone.

Lol -- get out of my brain! We had a hickory engineered hardwood floor very much like that in our previous home (see pic) and I loved it too. This was our previous home: But I hope you're just leaning toward mid-brown rather than attempting to get too close to the pic you posted, since it features hickory vs. red oak, it's wide plank, it's hand-scraped, etc. Now, both of us are dealing with a very different beast. No matter what color stain you choose, it's going to have a red cast unless you go very dark or take extra measures to reduce the red. There's a two-step product called Bona Red Out that can be applied to the raw wood after sanding, and it will neutralize a lot of the red and pink. You can also select a stain that has some green in it, since green is red's opposite on the color wheel. Since you like Jacobean, you could try mixing it with Duraseal Silvered Gray (a light color), and with Rustic Beige (a little darker), and with Provincial (darker, but still with a cool/ashy undertone).