Distressing My Dark Red Oak Floors Then Sanding Them

More decorators are specifying distressed floors as a way to make a new floor look like it s 100 years old and to give the floor a rustic casual feel.

Distressing my dark red oak floors then sanding them.

You would sand the floors 3 times with finer and finer grits. It was a project i was looking forward to tackling. Sanding the floors yourself vs hiring a professional. How to make distressed wood floors step 1 sand and clean floors step 1 lightly sand.

The living room floor is part of the original hardwood floor that s almost 70 years old. Oak hardwood floors wear well and look their best when properly refinished. My floors are done and while whitewashing red oak hardwood floors is a huge job i think it was very well worth the effort and hard work. We love them here at abm and were so excited when we pulled back the gross carpet in the habitat house to reveal the house had possibly original wood floors in ok shape.

Unlike some hardwoods oak continues to be relatively abundant and most oak floors are solid wood. See more about these techniques in the wet distressing and dry distressing sections above. The kitchen floor is only two years old. Both are red oak but the original floor in its raw state had a more red tone to it while the kitchen floor had a more pink orange tone to it.

You can save thousands of dollars by adding this. You would want to make sure you have the right equipment see. As you can see from the photo above right the more porous springwood stains considerably darker than the dense latewood giving the boards a distinct zebra striped look. In recent years distressed floors have seen a resurgence in california and other pockets of the country.

Distressing also is a way to match antiqued cabinets and furniture. Refinishing them was added to the list of to dos. Refinishing sanding staining polyurethane for hardwood oak floors. Once your final paint coat is dry you can start distressing it with either a wet rag or fine grit sandpaper.

Red oak and white oak floors absorb stain more uniformly but be aware that there is a difference between the density of earlywood or springwood and latewood of these species. I finished the floors last night so i couldn t walk on them to take pictures until this morning. My studio is so light and bright and i don t think it would look like that with dark stained floors. One advantage of solid boards over engineered ones is that you can sand and refinish them.

This smooths out surface imperfections cleans up the wood and prepares the surface to accept the paint better. Try using a combination of these methods and use both a wet cloth and a sanding sponge to create the look you want. Whether you are distressing a new floor or an old one you need to give everything a light sanding prior to starting.