YOU be the judge as was I. I went over the entire floor making sure it was SMOOTH AND CLEANED PRIOR to the staining process. Your crew should sweep and clean the wood floor prior to administering the first coat of stain/polyurethane. You want that floor as dust free as possible and my guys seemed to get it pretty clean after sanding! Now lets’ talk about the staining process and various shades to consider: By the way……my crew actually completed the entire scraping and the initial staining process in ONE day (about 600 square feet)
My crew had (FIVE) guys including the owner who scraped and stained all in one day! It was important to me that they did what they said they would do in the time line they set forth prior to the start of the project. They did complete everything exactly as they said they would “wood”!!
11. Prior to the staining process you should have already viewed a number of homes that have the stained scraped hard wood floors. Many reasons why I have already touched on! You can determine how “wavy” (rustic) you want your floors to look when done as well as get an idea for how the various stain colors will work in your house. There are THREE primary stains I was advised of: 1. Antique brown, Coffee Brown and a mix of a Redwood/Antique as I recall. I elected to go with the Antique Brown again per their suggestion. I THOUGHT I would want the coffee brown (darkest almost appearing black) BUT in the end the floor was plenty dark. The wood showed great highlights and produced the very rustic look I was wanting to achieve. IF you go too dark……….it can take away from and even hide many of the beauties you may want to see in your floor. When the final 3rd coat of polyurethane was applied I am glad I did NOT go any darker than I did! CALL is yours though. My installers were willing to stain several wood planks with the three types IF I wanted to see them before they proceeded to stain the entire floor.