Staining Stairs
We finally made the decision to begin renovations in our house. We started with the stairs updating them to something more modern farmhouse. Thanks to countless hours pinning on Pinterest, I put my vision together for the foyer area.
Here is a picture of how the entrance looked like before. Orange floors for the win. If this is your style go for it, but it’s not my style.
It has been quite the adventure trying to figure out how to match the laminate flooring throughout the upstairs and main-level to our stairs. We decided to keep our hardwood stairs. Because budget-wise, it made more sense just stain than to have to customize the larger stairs. Again we are in the middle of a pandemic, so it has been challenging to get the materials we needed.
There is a landing that breaks the stairs up, and we had to match the color so it wouldn’t look too off between the stairs and landing. This became a challenge because you can never get the same exact color. Who knew that different types of woods would change the stain color. Obviously, not me! I wasn’t aware that the end result can vary as the stain penetrates and dries off.
According to the wet stain, I thought I had chosen correctly when our floor contractor laid out the different mixes and the ones that he didn’t mix.
Here is why we thought we choose the correct stain color.
After 24 hours we were left with this dark gray floor color. It’s beautiful, but it was too dark and grey.
Thankfully, our floor contractor was so patient with us, more like me throughout the process of the laminate floor installation and staining the stairs. We had him come back out to remove the stain and restain the stairs. He laid out a few more options on one of our stairs. This time he said to give it a few days, so we could choose the best match.
We literally have lived in a dust house for the last couple of weeks. No matter how much you clean, dust somehow seems to appear. It all paid off because we were able to match the floor stain to the rest of the floors.
Here is the stain and floor color we used. We purchased both from Lowe’s.
- Minwax - Wood Finish Oiled Base Silver Grey Interior Stain
- allen+roth Fiordland Pemberton Oak Laminate Flooring