Sunday, June 18, 2006

Floors Part 2

I hoped that this weekend would mark the final chapter of the floor-refinishing project but unfortunate circumstances (explained in the next entry) left me with a lot of work this weekend and I still am not finished with the floors.

I made a lot of headway though, with mixed results. I finished sanding the floors on Saturday. No matter how much I sand the master bedroom, I can’t get rid of all of the staining (from pets, adhesive, and other crap under the previous carpet). I guess we will have to live with it – or buy a larger area rug.

I picked a “red oak” stain for the floors, hoping that it would darken the floors to a color approaching the original finish. I had also hoped it would disguise some of the staining in our bedroom. I started applying it in an area where it would not be seen – Sophie’s closet. Holy shit was that dark!!! Thank God I started in a closet. I wanted a color slightly darker than the current living and dining room but not this! I made a trip back to Home Depot to look at the stains again. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a stain that quite fit. I instead went for a more golden color called “Fruitwood”.

I have a dilemma now – I really didn’t plan on taking an extra day for more staining. The floors look nice but are still not quite as dark as I wanted. I may put on one more coat of stain in the hopes of getting the color a little deeper. Perhaps I’ll play with this tonight – in our closet - and see what the results are and decide from there.

Hopefully everything will be sufficiently dry tomorrow morning so I can put on the first coat of polyurethane.

Stay tuned for part 3…

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you tried mixing the two stains together to get something in between? That's what we ended up doing (actually our floor guy) when the dark stain was too dark and the medium stain too light.

Welcome to Oak Park, by the way. We've been here 8 years and really like it.

Anonymous said...

I like the color, looks nice. Good luck with the rest of the work! Stacy

Kim said...

Chris-

I think the floors look really great, no great surprise considering how hard you worked on them. Hope the job gets less stressful and more fun.

Kim