The floors are going to be ok. Repeat…. the floors are going to be ok. After a terror filled evening and early morning I can breathe a sigh of relief. It took only 8 hours to get that way, but I made it through today relatively calm.
The floor guy was able to make the Nantucket grey with white wash go away by putting another stain on top of it. At first, that didn’t sound right because we figured by doing that we would completely lose the grain. Not so. The lessons learned:
1. Don’t try to scale up stain plus paint. Remember 8 parts white to 1 part black? That doesn’t really work when working with larger volumes. The white paint was thick in consistency so when applied, it created a painted look. That mixed with the small amount of black led to Nantucket blue white wash (I made up that color).
2. Make sure the next coat applied is watery. That means more natural stain will go on the wood versus the thick paint.
3. Have a good floor guy who is sympathetic to your cause and in the end agrees with you that the original floor looked better in a beach house in the Hamptons than a mid-century Sarasota Ranch style home.
We had to go a little darker than we originally planned for, but it looks like all is better in the world.
Tomorrow: polyurethane coats begins.
