Has anyone had experience refinishing maple floors? We are renovating upstairs in our older home. The downstairs has oak flooring which we refinished shortly after moving in to this house (25 years ago) We are now refinishing the upstairs floors, but they are maple. After sanding and patching cracks etc. the stain was added. The floors have turned out all blotchy. The refinisher explained to me that maple floors don't take stain evenly, but I never thought they would turn out like this. Who has had experience with maple floors? Now I am not sure what to do? The refinisher is coming back in a couple of days to resand and try staining again. Any suggestions?
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Well after several weeks, my maple floors are finally finished and I love them. The refinisher had put on a conditioner, but the mistake was the assistant had sanded the floors too fine and they wouldn't accept the stain properly. A second sand, rougher than the first, was done, restained and now they look lovely. They are as smooth as silk and I am very happy. Thanks again for all your advice.
good point !
If it helps, the one nice thing about not staining a wood floor is if it does get a bad scratch, you won't see it because the wood at the bottom of the scratch will be the same colour.
Thanks so much for all the advice. When the refinisher comes tomorrow, I will show him the video about the wood conditioner. I am not sure what the floor would look like without any stain, but I do not want my floors to be too dark, so maybe that would work too. I had hoped to match the oak downstairs, but right now, I think a fair coloured floor would be better than it is now. So I have two strategies to try tomorrow. Thanks again for your words of wisdom.
do you have any pics as examples?
i'm one of them. :cry:
It makes you wonder what all those folks who have installed pre-finished maple flooring are going to do when they have to have them refinished.
Natural maple looks quite lovely. Why not skip the stain and embrace the natural beauty of the maple?
Chickadee: wood conditioner is what should have been put on the floor before it was stained. I am putting in a link to a Minwax video on how wood conditioner works. You would put it on for about 10 min or so and then wipe off the excess. At this point you can stain it. What it does is fill in the pores of the wood (maple is very soft and porous) so the stain will penetrate more evenly. Watch the video and there will be more instructions on the can. DH works for Minwax but this guy is not him.
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcL3v5Qe-AI[/url]
What will have to happen now is to sand the wood down, put on the wood conditioner, and then restain. Regular stain will only penetrate into the wood so much before it iwll take no more so usually 2 coats is all you should do. If you want more colour, a gel stain will build more colour on the surface so more than 2 coats can be applied as it is a polyurathane based product.
I just asked the painter who is here what he knows about maple and he says it always stains blotchy. Meanwhile he says that they usually use a very diluted sealer before the stain (it has to be diluted or the stain won't penetrate at all) and that sometimes helps but it's almost impossible to have an even stain on maple (or fir or pine) just due to the nature of the wood. He said with kitchen cabinets and such they use a lacquer stain usually to get a nice even coat but it chips so isn't good on floors.
It makes you wonder what all those folks who have installed pre-finished maple flooring are going to do when they have to have them refinished.