Is there a difference in floor stain brands?
My husband and I are planning to have our floors sanded and refinished in the next few weeks. We’ve hired a contractor to do it, but now find ourselves faced with having to decide how to finish them. The apt is pre-war. The floors are probably oak and currently have acrylic poly on them. Our…
My husband and I are planning to have our floors sanded and refinished in the next few weeks. We’ve hired a contractor to do it, but now find ourselves faced with having to decide how to finish them.
The apt is pre-war. The floors are probably oak and currently have acrylic poly on them.
Our contractor recommends that we use an oil based poly, which I’m fine with. But we also need to pick a stain. My cousin, who is an architect, seems to think that Minwax stain is terrible, and that we should use some high end stain that she uses for her clients. Our contractor uses Minwax, but said he’d use whatever we wanted to. I feel torn between the ease of Minwax (which I’ve never heard anything negative about up until now) and trying to find another brand which is supposedly better.
Does anyone have experience (negative or positive) with Minwax or other stains? Since this is probably our only chance to redo the floors, I’d like to it right.
While this post is on the subject of stains, especially Minwax and Mohawk, has anyone done any custom mixing of Mohawk stains to duplicate Minwax colors? We have a client who has some wood pieces finished with a Minwax Dark Walnut 2716. They want us to do some additional finishing on new wood products. We prefer to use Mohawk M530 wiping stain, which dries quickly, but we can’t seem to come up with a mix that duplicates the Minwax color mentioned above. Any suggestions?
We stained our pine sub-floors with Jacobean Minwax and then polyurethan. The wear and tear is horrible and although we should probably lift the floors and put down new … we would like to avoid it for another 5 – 10 years. What options do we have? Can we sand and then restain/poly? Help.
Mohawk oil-based and alcohol stains are excellent products.
Abbott Paint and Varnish moved from 40th street to Eagle Street about six months ago. They have plans to re-open a satellite store in sunset industrial park soon.
Try Mohawk brand stain. Its far superior to Minwax. Its available at a painting supply store in Sunset Park in the 40s off Third Avenue – sorry I forget the name of the place. A Google search on Mohawk stain will probably show it. I used Van Dyke Brown on my oak floors and am very happy with the results.
Avoid staining it as so many have already commented.
All of the aforementioned problems are typical of Minwax stains. They are not well suited for professional use, but good enough for hobbyists. The biggest problem with minwax is the drying time (72 hours)and adhesion of the binders.
The type of stain or dye that will work best for you depends of many factors such as color, clarity and specie of wood.
Tung oil is an excellent finish for floors as the dye is added to subsequent top coats, thus giving you full control of the tone. sutherlandwelles.com
There are good reasons not to stain a floor.
Staining means it will be virtually impossible to do repairs later. If an unstained floor starts looking a little dull and scratched you can screen (not sand) it and lay down more urethane.
Stain is also a sealer, which means that the urethane will sit on top of the stain, not soak into the wood fibers which is how you get a tough finish. Stained floors scratch and scuff more than unstained ones.
Stain will highlight imperfections in the floor, particular sanding mistakes. A bad stain job can also cause breed-through, where the stain backs up out of the wood when urethane is applied, leading to a blotchy finish and shortened finish lifetime.
On the “best urethane” question, you won’t find it at the Borg. Their DIY consumer crap stuff is dreck. Go to a real flooring store like Premium. Professional floor finishers often use Fabulon urethane. That’s what I’ve got here. It’s far outlasted the Minwax that some idiot (me) used on the stairs.
I’m surely in the minority, but I think a floor can’t be too light. Light floors brighten up and refresh the room and fit better with strong accent colors (if you have them.)
But then, I love bamboo floors as well.
Immediately upon sanding our oak floor, I was terrified that it would be too light. Once the poly was applied it was immediately beautiful.
Email me and I’ll send a pic that was taken a couple of years after it was refinished. ronrite1 at yahoo.com