Hey guys, Patrick here! I hope everyone has been doing well and I’m happy to report that I am back with a new blog post! This time, I thought it might be fun to bring you guys along on a cool and unique floor sanding project we recently completed in Lake Forest.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through what was done and what the process was for this flooring project located in the North Chicagoland suburb of Lake Forest. You’ll also see some of the available color selections for an exotic species of flooring like Brazilian Cherry and the most common looks I tend to recommend with this species of wood.

I’ll offer tips, suggestions, and just general guidance as I walk you through this fun 2,000+ square foot project! If you’d like to learn more about whether or not hardwood flooring might be a good investment for your home, you can read more about it on our other blog post. If perhaps you’ve decided you’d like to add Hardwood Flooring to your home, you can always reach out to us directly here.

Starting the floor sanding project

Well then, let’s jump into it shall we? As with any flooring project, it starts with the rough sanding. For this particular project, the homeowner was pretty unsure of whether they wanted to go with a lighter color or a darker color for their floors.

Realizing & Accepting Color Options

No matter what flooring project I am working on, I always like to clearly explain to the homeowners what their color options are so that they know what to expect. With Brazilian Cherry floors and exotic floors in general, expectations can sometimes be tough. This is because exotic woods like Brazilian Cherry do not take color in the same ways that more common household woods like Oak do.

Types of stains

There are many types of stains in the flooring industry. However, there are 2 brands that simply always beat out the rest. They are quick-drying stain products that are meant specifically for hardwood floor applications. Both of these brands are Duraseal Stain and Bona Stain. Both stains clearly specify that they are quick-drying products. I’d highly suggest staying away from products like Varathane or Minwax, as these can make the color application look uneven and sometimes take days to dry properly.

Stain Colors

Typically, I feel that in most cases when refinishing hardwood floors during the sampling process, many people will apply too many colors. This then only ends up being more confusing to customers. Making it much harder to choose a final stain color. Since we were very limited on what types of colors & stains this wood would take, I decided to present the customer with a small selection of 3-4 color options that I thought would look best in the final outcome. Below are the colors I decided to apply and a description of why I applied them.

Ebony Stain

Applied over Brazlian Cherry Hardwood Floors, this stain was the perfect option for presenting the client with the darkest option available. If they wanted to go super dark and hide as much of the Red color in the wood as possible, this was the choice.

Espresso & Spice Brown Stains

These were both applied right next to each other because they were both very similar. This typically tends to be the problem with Brazilian Cherry in general. A lot of the stains & pigments react identically on the wood. These two colors did present a beautiful variety of grain that still showed through the wood, and overall gave the floors a very rich feel while still highlighting a lot of the unique grain in this wooden floor.

Natural Clear Coating

This option presented the customer with the lightest possibility available. If we wanted the floors to go even lighter, a white tint could have been used over the top which would have mixed into the water-based finish. However, the customer did not want any white, so a natural clear coating without stain was the next best option in order to give them a good color variety to choose from.

Hardwood Stair Sanding Project With a New Spindle Installation

So the colors have been applied, and the floor sanding is underway, what’s next!? Well, I’ll tell ya what’s next, the stair project, haha. After the sanding project started, the client also decided to renew their staircase. This meant that we would be refinishing all of the stair tread tops, and replacing all of the old-style spindles.

Removing Spindles

Since the client had decided on new spindles to make the staircase look a bit more modern, it made sense to cut out and remove the spindles at this time. This is so that the team can sand the entire stair tread with the larger edge sander, therefore minimizing the amount of additional handwork that will be left over to do afterward.

staining & Finishing the newly sanded hardwood flooring

After days and days of continuous rough sanding, medium sanding, and fine sanding…it was finally time for the fun stuff, staining, and finishing, the Brazilian Cherry floors!

The client opted to go with the Spice Brown stain. I agreed that this was a wonderful selection and would really highlight the beauty of this floor while also still darkening it up tastefully.

Preparing Hardwood Floors For Staining

When all sanding was completed, the floors were vacuumed thoroughly and then water was applied to the flooring. This is a technique that I have discussed before, called “water popping”. This essentially opens up the grain of the wood and helps promote a deeper color penetration. On exotic woods like Brazilian Cherry, this is particularly important because it also helps guarantee a more even color application of the stain. I highly recommend applying the water with a backpack pump sprayer. You can find some options here. A sprayer makes it easy to mist the water over the entire floor surface, helping it to dry quicker.

Finishing Hardwood Floors After Staining

After the staining portion of the floors is completed, I highly recommend leaving the flooring project to dry overnight. Sometimes, when using a quick dry stain like Duraseal or Bona, hardwood floors can be coated on the same day. But, when dealing with more than 1,000 square feet, it’s best to play it safe and allow the finish an ample amount of drying time. This will help to avoid issues in the floor finishing process.

Type Of hardwood floor finish to use on Brazilian cherry

For this project, as for many projects, I opted to go with the Loba Invisible finish. I offer this as an additional option on quotes where clients are looking for a tiny bit more durability. This is a water-based finish that has an additional added hardener that gets mixed into every gallon. Loba Invisible is applied in a 2 coat system and dries very quickly.

This finish is a wonderful choice for people that have harder and more durable woods inside of their home, like Brazilian Cherry. But also, it’s great for homes that get more wear & tear from dogs as well as children. Loba Invisible and all 2 component finishes, in general, are highly recommended for commercial spaces like restaurants and museums.

final touches

Well, the finish line is almost here, can you feel it? After the first coat of finish was dried, it was time to reassemble the steps.

Installing New spindles

The new spindles were brought on-site, and installation began. Square, modern, and new spindles were chosen for the staircase this time. I thought the straight lines of the new spindles would greatly modernize the staircase and the overall look of the home. These are the spindles that I purchased for this project.

Final Coat of Floor Finish

Once the steps were completed, the hardwood floors were once again buffed & lightly abraded to smooth away any imperfections from the first coat. With water-based finishes, the grain often raises quite heavily after the first coat of floor finish application. For this reason, it is always recommended to lightly buff the floors before the final coat of finish is applied.

After the floors were buffed, they were also vacuumed. The entire home was then cleaned and prepared for the application of the last finish coat. Below are some of the final pictures after the floor finish dried. I threw in a couple of before pictures into the mix as well.

Thanks for Reading!

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read this. This blog has grown quite tremendously over the years, so I’ve decided to really try providing more content regularly. If you enjoy these project walk-throughs, please like the page and let me know if you want to see\read more about our Hardwood Floor Sanding & Refinishing projects around the Chicagoland area. If these posts gain enough popularity with our blogging audience, I’ll make them a regular thing. As always, thank you for being here, and if you ever have any flooring questions or if you’d like to book a floor installation & sanding project you can call us or fill out our contact submission form.