Really really need help with hardwood floor stains!

[HeroOfPellinor]

We're having our hardwood floors refinished. It's almost 1,000 sq ft of 40 year old Red Oak. The guy did a fantastic job sanding the floors and we picked out a stain based on the samples at Home Depot. The samples turned out to be NOTHING like the real stain. Not just the color was off, but the darkness was WAY off. We want chocolate colored floors and even the darkest stain, that looks black on the samples, just tints the wood a few shades darker. I had to have my wife come home from work to confer and then we told the guy we'd need the weekend to decide on a stain. The guy has been great and has done fantastic work, so I felt bad screwing with the timeline. He even tried some commercial grade "Woodline" stains that were just as ineffectual.

Does anybody know of a brand of hardwood floor stain that comes out extremely dark? I want to be walking on a Hershey bar brown.

And, if anybody in the Sacramento area needs their hardwood floors redone, I have the absolute best guy for the job. Just PM me and I'll send you his name and number.

Thanks. I'm off to search Google for hardwood floor stains.

 

[yakko]

I can't help with anything more than a bump.

 

[Muadib]

It take serveral coats of stain before you will come close to the color you see in a sample. How did you judge the darkness?

 

[compuwiz1]

Reapplication and 48 hours can do wonders. Let the original stain set in, a it will look darker later. Other than that, you guys almost need a totally black stain.

 

[NogginBoink]

I dunno... but maybe you can find the answer on www.doityourself.com...

bump.

 

[Sluggo]

Well, the longer you leave the stain on, the deeper the color will get. It is difficult to get some stain colors as dark as many people seem to want them for the simple fact that you can get so many tinting colorants in the stain that it will never dry properly, causing even more headaches as you begin to layer on finish coats.

One alternative (read more money) is to lightly tint the finish coats and to put them on lightly until you reach the desired color. This is an easy way to screw up a finish since you can wind up with a painted look, instead of a stain/finish look if you get the finish tinted too dark. The lightness of the coats would be difficult to control, since floor finishes are not sprayed on, rather put on heavily with a lambs wool applicator to get the proper build with the finish. Tinted finish coats may not be such a great idea on a floor since the general scuffig of a floor, would look funky with a tinted finish...Not sure on this, ask your floor guy.

You may also want to skip home depot, and go to a professional painters store who will have a larger selection of differents types of stains, and can help you to custom mix colors to suit your tastes. There are lots of types of stain....Lacquer stain, oil based stain, gel stain, each having different qualities for different applications. But as I stated before, many of the really deep finishes you see on cherry furniture for example, have been accomplished by manipulating the fish coats.

One light of hope for you is that the floor will generally get darker with age

EDIT

One more thing that can go wrong, and I AM NOT saying this is this is the case with your floor. It is possible to improperly sand any wood product, and in effect "seal" the wood so that it will not accept any stain properly.

 

[amdskip]

Why would you want them so dark in the first place? Let the wood show it's true beauty. I love red oak and sometimes I won't even apply a stain, just poly real good.

 

[rbhawcroft]

im just guessing here buy cant you get an off cut of the same wood, or pull up a small hard to see plank, sand the underside and satin a load of samples onto it,pick one, put the plank down and do the lot? If the wood hasnt changed in 40 yrs you may as well just get an off cut from a wood yard.

 

[amdskip]

Red Oak may be red oak but age and looks varies so it's not easy matching stains.