Hardwood Floor Refinishing

Floor installation, Floor repair

Posts Tagged ‘stain’

Water damage on the hardwood floors.

There are many floors that have a water damage and there is always a question whether that can be removed or not. Although many people are sceptical about it and there is no way to promise it, there are ways to get rid of the stains.

First and foremost: it is almost impossible to get rid of the urine stains, not if they’ve been there for years. In case these stains appeared recently(within the last 4-6 months), you can try to get rid of them with the chance of success.There are other types of stains, of course: somebody spilled something, or you had a plant on your floor and found water damage after removing it. Honestly, there is a good chance to fix these problems.

Now, how to fix the water damage? Well, there are two the most common ways. First, to sand the floor and try to go a little deeper on the spots, where the stains appear.Don’t go too crazy, because if you go too deep, you will have a gap in your floor, and the only way to fix that is by replacing the wood. If you sanded the floor and you didn’t have any luck, try to bleach the stains. Just take a regular bleach, put it on the rag and rub it into the surface. Be careful: if you will put too much bleach, you will end up with the white stains instead of black ones.There is no way to fix that one either, unless you will replace the flooring.

Like I said, if you know what are you doing, you should, if not get rid of the water damage completely, at least have much less of it, with the stains that are dramatically reduced in size.

If you didn’t have any luck removing the damage, you can always stain your floors. The best choice would be a darker stain, something like Red Oak,  Red Mahogany and Cherry: those are on the reddish side, or English Chesnut and Dark Walnut, if you want you floor to be more on the brown side.

Staining the floor

Lets talk about the staining of your floors using the most popular oil-based stain.
First and foremost: sand the floor down to the wood! You do not want to apply the stain over the old finish: it will take forever to dry and won’t stick to the floor.You will end up having the floor with what I’d like to call “a marker effect”: try to make a mark with the  magic marker and take it off-comes off very easy!
The bottom line is: if you won’t sand the old finish off completely, you’ll end up making more mess than you used to have before the start of the project.
Next, you’ll need to pick up the color of the stain for your floors: I wouldn’t use the brochures, that they have at the hardware stores,
but buy a couple of sample cans of stain and apply it at home:that way you will know how the stain is going to look like on YOUR floor.
Also, I have to mention, that it’s not a good idea to buy the stain in a 1 gallon cans anymore, because it is a low VOC stain: it is very hard to apply, and it dries up way too quickly, leaving you with uneven, ugly looking finish.If you want to use the oil-based stain, get it in quarts.
Ok, now the floor is sanded and the stain color is picked: what’s next?
I’ll try as much as I can to avoid talking about the application process(you can read all about it on the back of the can), but I have to say a couple of things about the prep work:
1. Before application, I would tape all the baseboards.That way I would avoid messing them up with the stain.The best type to use is blue or green Scotch masking tape: do not buy the cheap white one, because this kind will pull all the paint off the baseboard.
2. Heavy coat, hard wood (such as oak or maple) and high humidity can increase the drying time. In some cases I saw the stain being wet for a week.
The worst time for a staining job is July, August and September due to the highest level of humidity during these months(that of course if you leave near water).
If you have more than one room to stain, consider calling a flooring company: believe me, you will save yourself a lot of time, money and effort.Good luck!