Wood floors - opinions...

So you are thinking of either a herringbone pattern or strips. Here's a couple of things -
think about the room and its shape, size etc. The herringbone will be more expensive to lay (have you considered parquet squares?) than strips but would have more interest. I laid a parquet floor which was similiar (except for width of strips - old floor was skinny strips) to my 100 year old floor which couldn't be saved. We laid the parquets and then surrounded them by a border of straight strips with walnut strips and mahogany strips. It's nice. I chose Red Oak clear which is higher quality -- a little -- than select and did not stain it. I did lots of experiments with different Minwax stains in my basement and chickened out in the end, just sanding and polyurethening. They look nice. I found that different things happen to the wood with different stains. For example, colonial maple which is a little reddish but not dark seems to exaggerate the grain in the wood, whereas Golden Pecan, a very warm color seems to make the wood grain less noticeable and have a more uniform color. Even neutral stain exaggerates the grain a little. Then there was the whole thing of oil vs water based poly which I worried about sihce one floor of my duplex was done with water and it looked unfinished. But the key was putting enough on. We used Minwax water based polyurethane and 3 coats and that worked very well. The oil has a more shellacky look (nice) and gets an amber color with time. I just did the water since I have delicate tenants who would be annoyed by the fumes.

Anyhow, good luck.

Posted by: donatella at September 18, 2006 1:58 PM