Refinish those old floors

We just finished the floors the other day and wanted to show some images to share our progress. In my last post, I discussed our consideration of type of finish oil vs water. I am happy to say that we got a few samples of different products and tested them on off cuts of both the fir and oak flooring. This was very helpful because we could see that we were attracted to a more defined grain that resulted from the oil based products. However, we finally settled on an oil based sealer by Bona and a water bore urethane topcoat by Pullmann. I am so happy with the results and further very happy that we tested the finishes and did not simply pick a product because it was a marketed as green. See the images of our samples below. Zan and I worked together to spread the finishes. We first applied an oil based sealer which seals the wood and really brought out a beautiful grain. Then we applied two coats of the water based urethane. The application went really well, basically you work from the far extents of the house, in our case the two up stairs closets then work you way out; closet, bedroom, hallway, stairs, study, guest bedroom, kitchen, dinning room, living room and out. We let each of the three coats cure over night so all in all it took three days to apply the finish. We are really happy with the final product and learned a lot about refinishing old wood floors. See some images below. These were actually taken after the first top coat, which means the floors look even better now!