Gray hardwood floor refinishing in Westchester County
Yes, believe it or not, gray hardwood flooring is in style! Higher end homeowners in Westchester keep requesting gray hardwood floors. Yes, gray! It's and up and coming trend. Finding prefinished gray hardwood is easy, but how about if you already have oak hardwood floors in your Westchester home?
As background, it's easy to get the gray color in prefinished maple or birch floors. Because these woods are close pored, they absorb the stains differently and some of the darker brown stains turn gray on maple and birch (see picture to the right). These same stains will look brown on oak, but gray on maple. So, now that this trend has caught on, we have many homeowners who want to refinish their existing hardwood floors (which are usually oak) to have a similar look).
While achieving this gray look on existing oak hardwood is challenging (and is not to be done by your everyday contractor), it is possible to achieve when you have talented hardwood flooring refinishers. It costs more than your standard type of refinishing (read below to understand why), but for those looking for the stylish gray look, it's well worth it. How do you achieve the gray effect? Well first, the stain is a combination of ebony and white wash. We test different levels until we find the right level of gray that our customer prefers - it could be dark gray, light gray or somewhere in the middle. We will test the gray colors on your hardwood floors.
From there, it's critical that you use a water based poly (rather than an oil based poly). An oil based poly will turn the floor yellowish and it just won't work well with the gray. So water based poly in this instance is the best way to go. White wash costs a bit more, and water based poly costs a bit more. We strongly recommend Bona Traffic poly for this effect. It just lasts longer than traditional Bona and other water based polyurethanes. And, of course it costs more. It's often better to add an extra coat of water based poly, too for a more durable finish. After all, refinishing hardwood floors can be rather inconvenient as you need to move all the furniture and often vacate the house. And, since this is more expensive than your typical refinishing job, you might as well make it last longer so you can postpone the need to refinish your floors again.
Click here for more pictures on gray hardwood flooring
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If you live in Westchester NY, feel free to give The Flooring Girl a call at 914-937-2950. We'd be happy to help you with gray floors or traditional hardwood stain colors.
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Originally posted at: Staining hardwood floors gray | Refinish wood gray | Westchester
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