116 year old pine flooring - how to finish?

[Sarah Barber]

We have recently sanded down our yellow pine floors in our house built in 1900. Previously there was a warm, reddish orange stain on it from the 70's when the past owners refinished the floors that neither I nor my husband cared for. My goal was a neutral, medium brown walnut-type stain back when I wasn't sure what species it was, but upon learning it was yellow pine I haven't found a single stain I like on it due to the warm tones. I actually love the floors as-is, freshly sanded, and the guys at the Woodcraft store I went to was steering me towards just finishing with a water based poly so as to prevent super orange tones - I'm okay with yellow, but not orange. My issue is there are discolorations in the wood we couldn't sand through and I -know- there will be areas where we've done a subpar job sanding, so I want to minimize/hide these areas as best as possible, which I why I was thinking stain - but now I'm not so sure if that's going to hide them or it's going to magnify them more. Plus, I know pine is harder to stain and everything I put on it looks muddied. I know I'll put a satin or flat poly on, I never cared for shiny floors and I know it'll help hide any irregularities. Would just the low-sheen poly be enough to hide some of the sanding faults (I know it will not hide discolorations, but I can live with those)? Picture included.
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[mark mcfarlane]

Staining pine, particularly pine that has been previously stained and finished, can be quite a challenge. You need to be certain you have every bit of old finish off the wood or your going to get blotching, and you may still get blotching due to differential porosity in the wood.

Once you put furniture and some throw rugs back in the room the irregularities won't be as noticeable. Also, people pay big bucks for old damaged wood, so there is a school of thought to celebrate the defects rather than hide them.

An alternative would be to spray stain, which might be more uniform, or spray with a stain mixed into the topcoat (like a gel stain). That would give you a uniform color, at the expense of slightly covering some of the grain. I'd probably hire that out. I've tried brushing gel stain and its very hard to get uniform color in the overlap areas. On a large expanse like a floor I don't think you'd have a chance with a roller.

The only experience I have with floor refinishing was 50 year old oak. I just sanded it and put a clear coat on the top. At the next 60 year old house I owned I just waxed over the old floors existing finish, after cleaning, with a wax that had some dark color added too it. I don't remember the wax, that was 30 years ago. It didn't look like a new floor, but the cleaned and waxed floor looked much better than what we started with, with the dark wax hiding some of the scratches.

[Wayne Lomman]

The house is old so it is ok to have signs of age on a floor. If it is too perfect, it will look a bit sus. We have all seen public figures who have had just a bit to much cosmetic enhancement to be credible.

I am not a fan of staining pine floors. I would keep it natural and use a good water-borne finish. Choose whatever gloss you like. As Mark says, as soon as you redecorate you see the floor as a whole, not as good or bad spots. It sounds like a great job. Cheers

[Jim Becker]

Trust me..."staining" pine flooring is a difficult task, even for a pro. I have a 4200 sq foot home that's totally wide pine except where it's slate in baths/foyer and brick in the kitchen. When the addition went on, it took the pro floor folks about 9 tries to get the color of the new flooring to be similar to the older flooring.

The one room I did myself elsewhere in the house, I used a water soluble dye followed by de-waxed shellac to seal and add amber and then a high quality water borne floor finish for several top coats. Pine doesn't take a pigment based stain very well at all, even with pre-wetting for blotch control, etc. The difference in density between earlywood and late wood can be pretty significant and that affects how the stain works quite noticeably.

One other thing...the pine will naturally become "more orange" over time as it oxidizes. Nature of the beast...