Hello, Staining timber floors after floor sanding can be a tricky job. As someone has suggested, it is best to do some tests on the boards that you have. The floor sanding company that you choose should be able to do some stain samples for you if you give them the boards to experiment on. Feast Watson is a good product, but you will probably find that best stain colour for your timber floor is a blend of a couple of colours. Perhaps a blend of walnut and another colour . It really comes down to personal taste. Some contrast to other timber furniture is a good idea. Take a look at our Budget Floor Sanding Brisbane blog page for some more floor sanding information. Type "staining"into the search box, the second floor sanding blog has a couple of photos of a new timber pine floor( light colored similar to Baltic pine ) that we stained with Feast Watson prooftint, to blend in with a older floor. Hope this helps. All the best with your timber floor restoration. http://budgetfloorsanding.com.au/

The resurfacing idea with poly paint is great, however I wanted to change the look of the doors, was planning on getting some hamptons/French country looking doors or shaker doors. Wanted to get rid of the flat no character look.

In response to your questions - floorboards and decking don't need to run in the same direction as there will be a very visible junction between the two. In addition your decking boards will be quite a different board in colour, width and spacing to your internal floorboards, so there is no need to match the direction when all of these other aspects are different. The same applies when new floorboards meet old floorboards. They will probably be a different species, different colour, different age and different widths to your existing floorboards, but they tell the story of your old home. The only way to get a perfectly seamless transition between new and old is to rip out the old and replace with new. I always like floorboards in hallways to run parallel with the length of the hallway as it just looks better than short floorboards running across. Whatever you decide please let your designer know well in advance as your decision will affect the subfloor layout of the joists, bearers and stumps and may have cost implications. Your aesthetic choice may not be the most cost-efficient for the layout of the subfloor structure.

Way late to the party here, but another reason NOT fill dents/holes/gouges in your floorboads with putty, is to avoid my current nightmare. My 100+ year old baltic pine floorboards badly need re-sanding as there are lots of large grey patches where the finish has worn completely away which looks terrible and it‘s really hard to keep even half clean. Being a tad short of cash atm Im looking at doing it myself, so the other day I got down on my hands and knees and had a really good look at the patches that were worn, and it turns out that underneath 90% of them isn’t wood at all - its $#*&ing putty, and theres so much of it, in high traffic areas some boards are almost more putty than wood! its basically dirt magnet that’s really ugly yet really hard to remove, making the job of refinishing sooo much harder than it needs to be. If you plan on staying in your home for a while, chances are one day you’ll need to redo the floors, so to the question of putty? Just say no!