Update: The floors are looking beautiful! They've been sanded, stained and had their first two coats of water-based poly. They'll get the final coat in about another week, after the finish carpenters have motored through. I'm really happy with the color; a rich, warm brown that brings out the grain of the wood and shows it's character.
Original Post:
The original hardwood floors are solid Brazilian cherry. The wood is gorgeous and very hard - but very, very orangey-red. Not my favorite look for wood floors.
The raw wood is really beautiful. It looks like oiled teak and if I could get it to stay looking like that, I would have. Here's a shot of the unfinished cherry that was under some cabinetry we removed. You can see how orangey the old, oil-based poly made it look;
But putting any sort of durable finish on wood (oil or poly) will "bring out the richness of the wood" - in this case, bring out the orangey-red. I experimented with a variety of stains;
and decided on a 50/50 mix of Walnut and Jacobean, shown in the middle of the picture below. This mix brings brown to the floor, which it needs to help cancel out some of the red, without going too dark.
The Real Hardwood Flooring team sanded and patched earlier this week;
The put down the 50/50 mix of Jacobean and Walnut stains, then the water-based poly on top;
The results are very pretty, but definitely more "RED" than I had expected. My brain is crunching on this info, thinking about how all of the different elements will work with this very rich, browny-red floor... I haven't decided if I need to make any tweaks to the other elements yet, or if I'm good to go. I think I'll leave this as a background process for a week or so... Stay tuned....
Click here for Part 18: The Glamour
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