@roobear, thanks for the insight! I'll look into this.

I've found a few other links on this website about unfinished white oak, but most of the people were trying to decide on a color (with a professional floor finisher) rather than trying to perform the work themselves.

Hi Craig--My HD and I installed and finished our own white oak floors. Just like roobear said, you can do it, but it is time-consuming (yes--lots of 6 packs AND pizzas). You will love the white oak and it will be well worth the time spent. If you install yourself rather than having the GC do it, make sure you give the wood about a month to sit in the house to condition before you install. We used a manual porta-nailer to nail to our subfloor (we liked this nailer best of the three we tried--with as much square footage as you are doing, you may want to get pneumatic).

After you install the boards, you can expect "over-unders" where the board height is just slightly off, resulting in an uneven floor that feels bumpy. You will need to start with a sander that is aggressive enough to flatten the floor, like a drum sander and edger(we didn't have U-sand machines available). You have to be so careful with this type of sander as it will leave chatter marks (learning curve with this one--my HD practiced outside on plywood). We used 60 and 80 grit with the drum. As much as we tried to avoid chatter marks, we still got them (but only faint). After the floor was leveled, we sanded out the chatter marks and smoothed the floor with a large rectangular random orbital sander w/ 80, 100 and 120 screen (hand sander for edges). This sander is easier to handle for DIY's and won't gouge your wood. If you do not remove sanding marks, they will show up more pronounced after you stain/finish.

We did not stain our floors, just put poly over since we like the ambered look. The number of coats of poly you use will depend on what you go with. Just from my experience, if the floor looks how you want it to after two coats, don't put a third coat on.

Good luck with your floors! I hope this helps a little!

My husband and I installed and finished approximately 1900 square feet of unfinished white oak in our new build. We used Waterlox for the finish instead of a poly product.

With the method we used, we mixed the stain in with the Waterlox for the first coat and basically "mopped" it on. No wipe off needed. For the next two coats of Waterlox, we just used the plain Waterlox, with no stain added. With this method, it is not necessary to sand between coats. We had it sanded to finish grit prior to starting the Waterlox process.

We did do multiple sample boards of the Waterlox and stain prior to starting the entire area. Added the Waterlox to the stain and not do the wipe off changed the color considerably. It definitely added an amber undertone to the stain.

Here is a picture of the finished product:

Westie, that is so pretty!! Would you mind revealling your wood source? I am having trouble finding wider planks.
Thanks!!

We purchased the unfinished 5' character grade white oak from L & L Hardwoods in Chicago, IL. They normally don't sell directly to customers and want you to go through a dealer instead. We know the owner of the sawmill that supplies much of their lumber he refered us to them and they were willing to work with us as a result.

I also received a quote from Pennington Hardwoods and they were very nice to deal with, their quote was just slightly higher than our other source. Pennington's website is: www.Penningtonhardwoods.com They had wider widths, random widths and prefinished available. They were good about sending out samples of various finish options I was interested in.

I will warn you that we went with character grade to keep the costs down on the wider planks. However, we have numerous knot holes as a result. They don't bother me, but just about everyone who has come into the house has commented on them. As I am slowly putting more area rugs down, they are less noticible, but my five year old daughter did complain several times when she stubbed her toe in a knot divit while walking across the floor! They could have been filled, but the amount of epoxy that we would have needed to fill them in 2000 square feet was overwhelming.

Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: Pennington Hardwoods

Minwax is mostly a pigment stain. Try some aniline die stains, or the mentioned iron reaction.