I hate my new floor

last year

I did new hardwoods with red oak flooring. If I had known that any stain (except dark) would not allow for that stain color to be true ..rather the red/pink/amber/orange of the red oak comes through and now I have an amber/orange floor - Im sick! Im looking for the process I need to do to get my red oak floors re-stained (or whatever) to take a brown/beige/brown/wheat stain. Thank you!

Featured Answer

millworkman

last year

^^^^^ After sanding off the current finish 100%

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Comments (6)

PRO
G & S Floor Service
last year
You need to pre-treat it by bleaching or using pink blocker/Red out/Pinkqualizer.
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rwiegand
last year
In furniture finishing I'd use a greenish toner coat to balance a too red/orange appearance; does that not work on floors? Way less work than starting over. No substitute for proper testing of the finishing schedule in advance, of course.
PRO
G & S Floor Service
last year
last modified: last year
@rwiegand, There are not a lot of skilled finishers out there. Everything is tailored towards production. So, it's just a bunch of general laborers out there doing floor finishing. No one appreciates or has the patience for quality skilled work. Plus the price shock compared to general labor work is unbearable for a lot of clients.
PRO
Minardi
last year
In the future, get the wood that is the closest color to what you want, even if it costs way more. You will be much less disappointed, and dollars ahead, to just clear coat it and move on.
dani_m08
last year
last modified: last year
There are stains in the medium brown family that have green in them - green is opposite red on a color wheel and will help tone dwn the red color.

Here is just one example from a blog where they were having issues refinishing their red oak floors (every stain was still showing red/pink/orange when dried).

It's from Pine and Prospect Home blog. They also were advised (I think by SW) to add mineral spirits in order to lighten the stain they selected a bit.

https://www.pineandprospecthome.com/the-stain-we-chose-for-red-oak-floors/

I don't know anything about the particular stain that they used (I actually had never heard of it before - and it might not be used by professional refinishers - but it will give you an idea of how the green undertone in the stain will help neutralize the red in your red oak floors). There are other stains that I've saved in order to try when I refinish my floors shortly - it's fairly easy to find them if you search for stains with green tones to use on red oak floors.