The Human Stain

After sanding comes staining!

Our marathon sanding session took all weekend but that was nothing compared to the stain and finish work. Kathy and I stained all three rooms (parlor, hallway, dining room) to match the bedroom on this floor. Now there's no carpet anywhere and everything is stained the same color (except the kitchen floor, which is redwood instead of oak).

Staining large rooms is harder than you'd think. Or at least, harder than we'd thought. You have to wipe the stain off the wood after about 15 minutes, which means you can only stain as much as you can reach in that amount of time. Stain too much floor and you won't be able to wipe it off in time. Stain too little and you'll be working forever. Stain the wrong parts and you'll paint yourself into a corner. So we did each room in strips: Stain about three feet across the room, wait 15 minutes, wipe off, repeat.

After it's stained, the wood has a nice dark color, but looks a bit flat and grainy. The clear coat fixes that.

They no longer make the oil-based polyurethane clear coat that we used last year on the bedroom floor, so we had to find a water-based poly that would give us the same finish. I think we got pretty close. The threshhold strip between the bedroom and the hallway is the only place the two different finishes meet each other, and the difference there is pretty much invisible.

Applying the poly coat presents the same challenges as the stain, but for a different reason. You don't have to wipe the polyurethane off, but you do have to somehow cover the entire floor without walking on your fresh poly coat. So Kathy and I strategically divided each room into "his and hers" zones, got identical lamb's wool applicators, and worked across the floor toward the door. Last one out finishes the doorway!

Four successive coats of poly did the job, with about 4 hours drying time between each coat. Overall, it took a couple of days, with lots of TV watching and walks on the beach in between. After the first night, we tip-toed across the floor in our socks. I don't think we wore shoes upstairs for a week.

All in all, I'd have to say we did a pretty good job. We find maddening imperfections here and there, like brush marks or dust trapped in the finish coat. But it's done now, it's nice, and it's a lot better than the ratty old carpet that used to be here.