Staining Southern Yellow Pine Fl
Has anybody successfully stained Southern Yellow Pine flooring? What did you use? Our 109 year old floor in the kitchen is a bit beat up. We want to sand it and seal it with poly, but stain it darker first to help hide the imperfections and inevitable dirt in the kitchen. Have successfully refinshied this…
Has anybody successfully stained Southern Yellow Pine flooring? What did you use?
Our 109 year old floor in the kitchen is a bit beat up. We want to sand it and seal it with poly, but stain it darker first to help hide the imperfections and inevitable dirt in the kitchen. Have successfully refinshied this floor with water-based finish elsewhere in the house.
Thanks.
Thanks, Mopar and Slopefarm. Using a sealer help ensure a more uniform stain sounds is advice I have read elsewhere. Must be true. However, not sure I can live with the zebra stripes that will be the most likely result if I try to stain too dark, with or without sealer.
Slopefarm, I will check out the stain resource you mentioned. Costco is nearby. Ultimately I may have to paint (glaze/thinned paint) to get the uniform look I was going for.
And then still 4 coats of satin poly.
Just re-reading posts above. The sealer is key to tone down the wide variability in color tones in pine. Again, very important to have someone very experienced apply this so everything comes out even.
P.S. Also, you really need to get someone very experienced if you’re going to stain pine, so it doesn’t look like a toddler’s finger-painting project.
We have white pine from the 1890s throughout the house. Pine is difficult. Our very experienced and meticulous floor refinisher first used a sealer so the colors of the pine would be more even. Then he tested several different Minwax stains and we picked Golden Oak. With several coats of satin water-based polyurethane it was just gorgeous and didn’t look anything like pine. Unfortunately, we then put one coat of semi-gloss on it because we worried about durability, and that made it much darker, so now it does look like pine. However, it’s still very beautiful and we get a lot of comments on it.
With pine, I would recommend using a sealer and no stain, then three to four coats of semigloss if you want a typical pine look. Alternatively, you can use a stain and four coats of satin. Semigloss is harder than satin but four coats of satin should do the trick anyway.
Also, note you don’t want to go too dark with the stain if you have pine, because then you start getting ridiculous stripes. I mean, it’s not really possible to get, say, a really dark, even chocolate brown floor if you have pine. It’s not going to happen.
One more thing. Senator Street referred me to a great stain supply place that has much better stuff than minwax, and some expertise as well. Off 3rd Ave, I think in the 20s or 30s, near costco. You might want to go in and consult with them and see what they recommend. For a small area, it won’t cost too much to upgrade the stain quality, and they may have ideas. There is a big difference between minwax and the good stuff. Bring in a couple of photos and see what they say.
Search the archives under floors. I thin the thread is about 6-12 months old, or maybe someone readong knows this place and can post.
Thanks, Slopefarm. Good advice. We do like the natural finish elsewhere, but not for the kitchen. Just tried staining a spare board with a dark Miniwax oil stain today, but the strong grain and resin in the board makes for very strong contrasts since the stain is absorbed at radically different rates.
We may decide to paint and then poly to get a more uniform look.
We have 140 year old pine (pumpkin pine). We did some tests and most tinted stains looked artificial due to all the color latent in the wood. Everything in the cherry range looked like cheap paint because of the wood. Do some trials — sand and then do a few test spots, both of a clear finish and a few choice stains. You would be surprised how much natural variegation you will have with a clear finish, which might minimize imperfections. Alternatively, go with a real dark brown.