Refinishing old Pine floors

10 years ago

Hello. We have a 105yr old house that we're refinishing some flooring in - three rooms of 4" pine, very few knots, no cracks/warping. The rooms were carpeted when we moved in. As we pulled the carpet up, we found old, dark stain about 3 feet out from each wall, but, no stain/finish had ever been applied in the centers of the rooms. I'm assuming this is where they had large rugs in the day and they simply pulled the edges of the rugs back and stained the visible wood that the rugs didn't cover. So, I rented a drum sander and edger, got all of the old stain/varnish/finish off and sanded down the entire surface with 36/80/120 (the aged wood must be all the way through... we probably sanded off a good 1/8th inch of surface and the dark never came out). Now, however, we have large dark/aged rectangle areas in the centers of the rooms where no stain/finish was ever applied (see pic), and much lighter wood where the finish/stain once was. I'm assuming that the stain/finish preserved the original wood and kept it from naturally aging, wheres the areas that were only covered by rugs have aged.

Obviously, we want to even this up as much as reasonably possible, but, not sure how. I've read that I can feather in a light stain on the lighter areas in order to match up the darker areas, then start from there with whatever overall stain/finish we want. Is this true?

We would like to end up with a low-sheen/matte finish that doesn't look plastic. We don't want it to look like we just installed all brand new flooring - we're hoping to maintain some of the historical authentic look/feel. But, I'm also worried about working with pine and the blotchy-ness potential. One option I'm looking at is using raw dark Tung oil, but, really have zero experience with stains/finishes.

I have two questions:
1) What can be done to even up these dark rectangles to the lighter un-aged areas?
2) What are recommendations to achieve that nice low-sheen luster on pine and end up with a medium to 'light'-dark color?

Comments (4)

millworkman
10 years ago
The dark areas are "unaged" as they have not been bleached out by the UV rays from the sun. Others on here will give you a better idea of what you can do to attempt to get the colors the same.
User
10 years ago
I have only come across this issue once. A floor had area rugs on them so long that the light had bleached the perimeter of the room. Just like yours, it did not sand out. The only solution I can suggest is to find a light/medium stain that would be close to the color of the centers of the rooms and stain the entire floor. IMO, trying to stain the areas different isn't likely to work. For the best result, apply a light coat of water to the entire floor, let it dry then apply the stain. You can add up to 8oz. of the same stain to each gallon of oil-modified polyurethane and apply two coats of tinted poly, abrading lightly between coats. Abrade the second coat and apply a final coat of clear satin oil poly.
It would be ideal if you have an area where you can make a sample first.
This process should make the center of the room slightly darker and the edges of the room much darker, and address the issue of the Pine possibly being splotchy from the staining process.
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lazy_gardens
10 years ago
Pick a stain that is the color of the middle tones of the darker area and apply it over the entire floor.

If that doesn't even it up enough, find some boards that cross the light/dark boundary and stain them a couple shades darker than the first stain to break up the lines of the dark patch. Pick random boards -

Also darken a few boards that are completely inside and outside the dark patch to make it look like natural color variation between boards.

Use a pre-stain conditioner to prevent "grabbing" and blotching.
weedyacres
10 years ago
We had something similar in our house. The parts that were worn when we removed the carpet as in this photo...

Were the parts that turned out darkest when we sanded, sealed, and poly-ed.

I guess the shellac/lacquer that was on there protected the wood from aging. Interesting.... We opted to just leave it as-is and call it character. :-)