STAINING FLOORS

I think many people struggle with choosing a stain color for hardwood floors.  The most common material is red or white oak.  If you go with a natural stain over time it seems to turn an undesirable yellow/orange color.

Since cleaning out the bedroom was halted by a 3 hour delay while I looked over a few old Cottage Living magazines.....I went into my office to file a few things and found this page from Domino magazine.

And that delayed the "great purge" of the bedroom until I can motivate myself again....possibly sometimes in 2014.

Now I realize you would have to have the eyesight of a buzzard to read this....

So I took a picture of it with my trusty iPhone. 

I was looking at the white ones and realized I did not follow these rules at all when I did my floors in white.  #rebel

For my bedroom I used 50% white latex paint [BM China White] and 50% water painted on and then wiped off.

Here is what I started with....white oak and I think they are 4 1/2 inch width.

Here is the outcome after a few coats of matte poly applied.

I love them and they still look good 5 years later.

For the rest of my house I used 50% water and 50% paint [same color] but no wiping off.

This is a picture of the floors BEFORE sanding and painting.  They are the original floors installed in 1946 when the house was built.  They were pretty darn orange.  You can see the new floors ready to be installed in the area where we had a leak.  

Here they are after a few coats of poly. 

To say I love them is an understatement. 

And after 3 years they have held up really well!

Why am I telling you this....well there are a few new Minwax stains out that I also love.

Classic gray and Weathered Oak are 2 of them.  Instead of that red/orange undertone they have a more "ash" look to it which I love.  My "go to" stain color used to be 1/2 dark walnut and 1/2 jacobean.

Here is [left to right] Red Mahogany  Pecan, Classic gray on bead board.

Now I could research a million images on pinterest but "ain't nobody got time for that"....so get to searching.  I did pin a bunch of stain colors on my DIY board....

Have a smoking good weekend.....

Do you like the new look of my blog?  If you do you can thank Shari from Little Blue Deer.  She is the bomb and so dang easy to work with.  Does it all website....wordpress...blogger.

You might need a little fresh up?

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