Custom Colored Hardwood Floors

Lately we have been having fun playing around and experimenting with different colors of stains, dyes, pre-treatments and hardwax oils. We’ve come up with some great color combinations. I thought I’d share some of them with you to give you some inspiration for your own floors.

When it comes to hardwood flooring, many people are happy to stick with the tried and true traditional stain selections that have been around for many decades. They can be a very good choice too. The reason they’re popular is because they work and are classic colors.

Vintage Floor Sanding Machine Ads

Sometimes it’s fun to see where we’ve come from. So we thought we’d look through our collection of vintage advertisements and share a few with our readers. In particular, old wood floor sanding machine ads.

The vintage advertisements we found below are from way back in the 1900’s through the 1930’s and up to the 1950’s. It gives a small glimpse into the evolution of our two most used machines for refinishing hardwood floors – the belt sander and edger.

Fume + Stain + Water Based Finish

This was an interesting hardwood flooring project we got to work on recently. Our good friend Arvydas from Arch Remodeling (you can see some other interesting floors we have done for him on this page), called us up and asked us to rescue this 1,600 square foot floor in a beautiful house north of Chicago.

To say the floor was in a bit of a mess would be quite an understatement. It was very dark, almost black in color, and the finish was very uneven in sheen and the color extremely blotchy. Most likely the previous “refinisher” tinted the final oil based finish coat with stain to try and get a darker shade to cover up his bad staining job.

Why We Love Hardwax Oil Finishes

Recently we were asked to come out and have a look at a tired and well worn hardwood floor that had been installed just over 7 years ago. It was one of the early floors that had a hardwax oil finish applied – OSMO Polyx Oil.

When we showed up to take a look, our first impression wasn’t good. The finish looked like it was in pretty rough shape from a complete lack of maintenance over the years.

Why Does My Hardwood Floor Have Gaps?

It’s that time of year again when I start getting asked the same question over and over… “Why does my floor have gaps?”, or some similar version of that like “Can you fill the cracks in my floor?”

It’s not fun to have your floors refinished and the boards are tight in the summer and then, just a few months later, when things start to get colder, they start opening and being full of gaps.

What on earth is going on? Is there something wrong with your floors?

Fumed Rubio Monocoat in Chicago Loft

We recently completed another cool hardwax oil project in the Logan Square area of Chicago. It was in an old industrial building that had been converted into trendy lofts about a decade ago. The owner of this particular loft was doing a small update/renovation and wanted something different than the traditional finishes for his red oak floors.

In his online search he stumbled upon us and our articles about hardwax oils.

After seeing the creativity that Rubio Monocoat offered, and looking at some photos of the fuming process from our prior jobs, it was decided to go for the same concept. But for the top color oil application we were going to experiment and come up with something unique.

Cure Time vs Dry Time

One of the first things our clients will ask us once we put on the last coat of finish is “When can we walk on the floors?” The next question that usually follows is, “When can we put the rugs and furniture back?”

Good questions and ones that need a good answer.

Let’s have a look at each closer.