Hardwood Floors

This weekend, while we are busy packing up our apartment to move, our hardwood floors are being sealed.

In order for us to be able to move in so soon, the floor is being done in two phases. In the front of the house we are able to re-use all of the existing, original red oak hardwood, so it's been patched and sanded down. In the back of the house we have to put down new flooring - the kitchen never had hardwood, and some of the dining room floor suffered water damage during construction - so our guy is going to match everything when he can come back and do the rear of the house.

During this process, we discovered there are many layers to the floor sandwich - stain, sealer, and finish - and there are choices to make for each.

Stain

We decided to stick with an oil-based stain, because from what we could tell the colors tend to be better, and they are what our flooring guy has the most experience with. Any smells or toxins they contain will be encapsulated by the lower-VOC sealer and topcoat.

We wanted a very brown walnut-like color, without too much yellow or red, so that it wouldn't clash with the other woods we will have throughout the house. In addition, we didn't want it to be too rich or dark. We opted for a nice rustic-looking Dura Seal Medium Brown #128 - pictured on the lower right.

Finish

We're pretty adamant about using more eco-friendly and less toxic construction materials in our home where practical. Traditional oil-based finishes for hardwood are notoriously vile and the smell often lingers for months, so we opted for a water-based finish. In addition to being far less smelly and lower-VOC, it dries in a matter of hours, not days.

AFM makes a great line of low-VOC water-based sealers and topcoats but they are very expensive. We decided instead to go with BonaKemi, another reputable brand with green offerings that doesn't command such a premium. We don't want a thick, high-gloss, high-school gym floor look, but want something a little more natural so we are using a satin finish.

Sealer

The stain we chose is actually a sealing stain, so a separate sealer ordinarily wouldn't be necessary. But since we are using a water-based topcoat, we were advised to use a sealer since the topcoat and stain wouldn't blend properly otherwise (oil and water). There was definitely a lot of disagreement and confusion around this topic, but we went with the sources we trusted.

Again, we're sensitive to toxicity so we chose the BonaKemi BonaSeal product which has a lower VOC content than most other sealers.

Here's the breakdown:
•Dura Seal QuickCoat Medium Brown #128 included by contractor
•BonaKemi BonaSeal, 1 gallon $38.51
•BonaKemi BonaMega Satin, 3 gallons $150 or $50/gallon