Staining Floors

Well the end is soon approaching.... We have moved to the final stage before we move in: finishing the floors. This past weekend Adam & I stained all of the floors with Minwax Stain Dark Walnut.

Since we had a bad trial run with the poplar floors in the bedroom and living room, we prepped them first with a coat of wood conditioner. We used Minwax and Cabot brands for this.

Staining is a long, painstaking process. It is done on your hands and knees by ragging the stain onto the floor, and then wiping off with a clean rag. Poor Adam did the first coat of stain on all the floors all by himself. His hard work is pictured below:

The staining all went very well. Yet the foyer and dining room did not stain up quite dark enough on the first go around. So Tuesday night, while Adam worked late, I went back and put another coat of stain on the dining room and foyer floors. The second coat really gave us the color that we wanted.

Last night we put on the first coat of polyurethane. Adam insists that I go check it out on my lunch break because so far it had turned out beautiful! We used Minwax Polyurethane Clear Gloss.

We will apply the second coat tonight, and the third on Friday. The poly will have to set for at least 72 hours before moving any furniture on it. To check out all the pictures of staining and pre-staining, check out the latest pictures on our Flickr page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamandmariahshouse/