Question about staining oak floors

[NY Linda]

Hello everyone!

Last summer I planned on redoing my kitchen, and I removed the POs indoor/outdoor carpeting that came pre-stained and smelly. Found the original 1891 floor underneath (1" thick with a 1" t/g subfloor!), that was perfect in every area that I didn't need it to be (of course).

From the looks of it, there were several kitchen fires that damaged the floor in varying degrees, leaving bad patches in small perimeter areas and the walkway directly in front of the cabinets. I was able to find salvage oak flooring to make the repairs, but due to contractor problems, the floor and the kitchen were put on hold. There didn't appear to be any finish left on the original floor at all - and because it's not sealed, I've done little more than sweep and damp mop it.

The other day I was putting some shellac on trim in another room, and thought I'd run the rag across a few boards in the kitchen to see how it looked. They seemed far more shellac-ed than they should have. Turns out that there is still some old shellac on the floor because when I hit them with a bit of alcohol, the finish perked back up.

However, it was then that it became clear that the floor was laid with alternating boards of red oak and white oak - in a striped pattern. The boards are very long 12' to 14', and from what I can tell, this pattern was deliberate and runs throughout the room. It's definitely not random. The salvage wood I bought is white oak, so it will look really obvious if the pattern isn't continued. I can't imagine that I'd be lucky enough to find red oak in the same configuration.

The thing is, because of all the nail holes in the original floor and some of the discoloration from the previous fires, I'd planned on staining the floor. Does anyone have experience with staining these two woods? I'm hoping that they will take the stain similar enough that the floor will seem to be one color, with varying grain patterns.

If that won't work, any other suggestions? Could the individual white oak boards be color matched to the red with stain?

Thanks so much! Here's a photo of the area that needs patching. The original floor is the part closest to the little rug at the bottom of the picture. The entire 13' showing (plywood and other patches) needs to be replaced. Some of it is only 48" wide, but many other sections run the entire span of the room - another 12' out of the picture.

[Al F. Furnituremaker]

Getting the red oak to match in color to the white oak, especially if you plan on staining the white oak is going to be a trial and error process. You can try wood bleach (not Clorox), it may or may not remove the red in the red oak. Also to reduce red tones, green dyes can be used. But if inexperienced using dyes, there is a risk factor there.

The whole process depends on what stains (if any) you plan to use and what finish. Each of those will react with the different woods in different ways. Just making the two woods match, prior to final staining/finishing isn't going to work.

Unless you are very experienced in matching woods and have lots of scrap to practice on, I would embrace the differences. Finding some used red oak flooring shouldn't be that difficult.

[Mick_VT]

I'd echo Al in trying to replicate the difference rather than hiding it.

[phil]

looks like it is kind of a galley kitchen and this area between thie counters might look ok with cork flooring and leaving the rest of the wood exposed.
If you want to patch in new wood you can. My kitchen floor looked much like that. I pieced in some reclaimed flooring, you will have to make some baoards go into the good flooring in order that they don't all end in the same place.

I used wood bleach and lightened the whole floor after patching and sanding, then darkened it again. i put a bit of brown and reddish (cherry) stain into my 2nd 3rd and 4th coats of danish oil and by adjusting the color that way I was able to get a really good match. once happy with the color again I sealed it in with 3 coats of poly.

My floor had lots of nails that had rusted from other flooring being overtop and trapping moisture so the wood bleach worked wonders on the black marks caused by the tannins in the wood reacting with iron. It also made the floor lighter but having to darken it gave me some leway to make the color match.

[wletson]

looks like it is kind of a galley kitchen and this area between thie counters might look ok with cork flooring and leaving the rest of the wood exposed.

I like the concept Phil threw out there. Is the rest of the room in good shape? If you tackled that four foot section that really needs replacing as a separate entity, running the flooring in the other direction, or even running a border around it in the red oak, something to make it look like a design choice... rather than a patch job...?

I think trying to match up with what exists is going to be pretty tough, and it kinda seems a shame to stain everything the same tone when they went through all the bother of alternating the oaks. That will look beautiful when brought back.

just a thought, or two.

[phil]

That spot in front of the counters is going to see high traffic, cans of soup rolling off the counter leaving a dent or a rock in your shoe or whatever. But cork there might be a great surface for this kind of wear and you could still enjoy the look of wood in other areas. maybe avoid the huge patch job too.

[NY Linda]

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

I guess before I decide, I'll try staining a small area and see how it looks. With just shellac, the striping is quite overwhelming and too busy! Even it I could match it, I think I eventually want to tone it down a bit

It's currently kind of a galley, but from other clues in the room, the basement stairs were added in the 1930s (the back railing is just barely visible - white color - on the right hand of the photo. My guess is that originally it was separate pieces against the walls. More than likely a stove fire burned through the floor, and the basement stairs were added at that time. There are five doors, two staircases, and three windows - no corners to run cabinets, and the stairs to the basement are about 5 feet into the middle of the room - a designer's challenge for sure.

The last POs decided to "open up the room" (grrrr) and took down the walls (and beadboard) surrounding the basement stairs, leaving a waist high railing all the way around that looks like a crib. No kidding. It's horrible!!! But they didn't stop there....curvy back stairs replaced with trashy pine with different layout, butler's pantry removed to add an awkwardly placed washer/dryer, etc. The one original feature left is the floor, so I'm planning to keep the center of the room open as much as possible to show off the floor.

I'm not worried about a wood floor in the kitchen - no small children or dogs, and I hardly ever eat canned soup It's such great wood, that even without much of a finish, it's held up really well so far.

Will post pics after staining attempt. BTW, Phil, most of the nails came out clean. I was lucky that a 1920s nail down floor (with tiny little nails) was the first new floor put on top of this one. All the glue-down linoleum, vinyl, and carpet was on top of that and it saved what was left of the floor - too bad it wasn't fireproof!

[phil]

my situation was similar , they had added stairs down and stairs up , that made the kitchen too small so they hiked the roof up a bit and reclained the lost stairway space by moving an outside wall out 4 feet. The floor suffered with patches etc just as yours has.

maybe you can just redo the missing parts with salvaged floring and then maybe sand and then oil the floor with clear finish and have a look to see how you like it , If you want to stain you can.

If you sand and then put a heavy stain on the floor with no other finish what happens is the pigments want to collect in scratches and cracks and that can amplify imperfections that you wouldn't see otherwise. I guess it depends just how much stain you want. Maybe you could mask off every second board and spot stain but it might go sideways on you.
You could also put some tint in your poly or amber shellac or whatever you topcoat with but anything you add as a layer on top of the wood will hide the grain at least somewhat.

other than stains there are dies as well, often they are best sprayed on to get uniform coverage. the problem with wiping stains is that you can get an uneven application which can look horrible. sometimes a stain or die that is wiped on and then off can accentuate the grain pattern. this is more common in cabinet shops where they have a spray booth and more control. The rough concept is that if a die is reduced with alcohol or a thinner and sprayed on, then the pigment is evenly distributed. If you wipe it on the stain will find the cracks and more absorbent parts of the wood's grain. Sometimes the wood can be preconditioned to more evenly accept the stain by putting a coat of sanding sealer or a coat of clear danish oil or something to make the porosity of the surface uniform. some woods like maple tend to suck the stain up in an uneven rate because the grain isn't perfectly uniform resulting in a blotchy look. some testing might show you best what gives the look you want.

If I wanted a dark floor I'd be tempted to use some stain in my oil and do about 3 or 4 coats of oil with drying time between, then I'd put more stain in my poly and do about 3 coats of that, this way you build the pigment in stages hopefully avoiding streaky patterns from wiping or issues with the stain being accepted unevenly due to variations in porosity in different areas of the floor.

if you look at a board that is flat sawn you will notice the grain patterns, If you start putting a bunch of boards over a jointer or planer you may notice that on some boards if you look at the edge you can see the grain isn't just wavy sideways across the board but also up and down through the board. when you plane the board you sometimes see some tearout because the grain shifts from running horizantally to maybe some up and down waviness.. if you lok at where the tearout occurs and look at the edges of that board you see that in areas where you have more up and down waviness ( towards and away from the surface) you will have more tearout and those are the areas that are going to suck up more stain.

different woods have different grin patterns. every board is different but in all woods you will see some of these characteristics if you really look for them. some woods like mahogany are pretty uniform, and some are not. it also depends upon how straight that section of the tree was and what direction it was cut from the log. lots of really nice furniture is made from quartersawn oak and you see some lovely grain patterns. Your floor won't be quartersawn but it will have some patterns and imperfections no matter how it was cut.

a lot of nice old furniture was quartersawn oak with a fumed finish , they would expose the wood to amonia fumes to make it darken. this is seldom done now beacause ammonia fumes are dangerous. You won't see that so much in flooring but you might if you have some built-in cabinets that are original. It loooks beautiful on quartersawn oak and it was a common way of finishing oak furniture.