One Year Ago, I Sanded and Gel Stained our Wood Floors. I know a lot of you have been waiting patiently for this review post, sorry for the wait, but I did want to wait the full year to be able to give you an honest update on how the have held up over time, So Here it Goes…
*Disclaimer: This post contains Affiliated links which means that I receive a small commission for purchases made through these links.
Recap:
As a recap or if you are just hearing about this for the first time today, this next picture is what our wood floors looked like over a year ago. The floors had an orange color to them that we didn’t like and wanted to change. I wasn’t up for all of the hard work that it takes to sand and finish floors, so I took the easy way out and Gel-Stained them. READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE.
The First thing I want to say is that I have NO REGRETS! I really did not like the orange floors and so honestly I think I would have been happy with any kind of change that I made to them. When I look back at older pictures of our home, I cringe just a tiny bit, when I see those orange floors.
Second, I just want to mention that for whatever reason these floors are really hard to photograph. We get a lot of light in our home and the light reflects off of the floors creating blur and unevenness to the floors. I think they look way better in person then in pictures. I tried using both my phone camera and my Canon camera, and still couldn’t get a clear shot. And actually, I remember having the same issue when I shared the Gel-stained wood stove mount in our kitchen. It too was photographing weird.
Gel Stain is Awesome!
Since I gel-stained these floors, I have gel stained a ton of other things around our home because I am such a huge fan of this Gel-Stain. I absolutely love Gel Stain and really love the darker colors. Here, on our floors I used the color Coffee, and in the kitchen I used the color Aged Oak, although both colors look the same to me.
Dark Floors are hard to keep clean.
Now, let’s just talk about dark floors. Ummmmmm they are super duper hard to keep clean. If you have or ever have had dark floors then you will know exactly what I am talking about. We have a busy household with two teenage boys and a Great Dane Dog. I feel like I could sweep and mop these floors daily and still wish they were cleaner. I love these floors the very most right after I sweep and mop them, but the rest of the time, they will be dusty and all the crumbs will be visible, but it doesn’t actually bother me too much.
I love dark floors because I love British Colonial Style. British Colonial Style always has dark floors, it’s part of the tradition of British Colonial style, and so that is what I was going for and why I wanted to have dark floors in our home in the first place.
All I have experience in with Gel Stain is the darker colors. So I would suggest that if you are not wanting to go as dark as I did, then to pick out a few different lighter options to test out. In my experience though, the dark color covered nicely and evenly after two coats, and I’m not 100% sure if a lighter color would get you the same results. But please let us know if you do try this out with a lighter gel stain and how it worked for you.
How have they Held up?
I think the biggest question everyone wants to know is How have they Held up? The Answer is Really Well but some precautions need to addressed. Pictured above and below is the main traffic zone in our home. It’s the front door entrance and it’s the walkway between rooms and I’d say it still looks the same as it did after I finished the floors. Now, Granted we do sometimes have a rug here, but I think it would still look the same even if we didn’t.
Furniture Sliders and Pads are a must!
Where there has been any scratches or issues, is when we didn’t have pads on our furniture. Some scratches were made in the beginning when I was having to move furniture around to gel-stain other sections. When I gel stained these floors a year ago, I didn’t have the option to clear the room and so I had to section off different areas at a time. So there was a lot of moving furniture around and on newly stained floors. I did my absolute best, but I’d say some Light scratches were made. I wish that I had known about Furniture Sliders before hand, because they would have help a ton with this.
This next picture below is a spot in our dining room, where I had brought in a wicker chair but did not have pads on the feet of it, and as soon as I noticed that it was making scratches, I put furniture pads on the chair and from then on it didn’t make any new scratches. There are a lot of Furniture pad options available, I just use the felt sticker ones.
I have also noticed a problem with painted furniture feet, again, I probably didn’t have furniture pads on when this happened, but the foot of this chair made a paint mark on the floors. The same thing happened under the kitchen table with white paint.
Now these are easy fixes. When I finally get around to it, all I need to do is give the area a light sanding and gel stain a fresh coat of gel stain over the area, wait a few days and then give it a coat of clear sealer.
Final Thoughts:
To sum up this blog post, I’m still happy that I gel-stained our floors. If I did anything different I would have maybe tried out a few other colors of gel stain, just to see what my other choices were. And then I would have purchased furniture sliders and pads in bulk and made sure they were on all of my furniture pieces. I’m also thinking I should invest in a fancy robot vacuum that also mops and have it running all day long. Does anyone have one that they love and would recommend?
If you have been thinking about gel-staining your floors, I say go for it! Obviously, If you can afford to buy all new floors or to have someone do the job for you, then definitely take that route. But if you are like me and want to change your floors but don’t want to spend a lot of money, and don’t want to rent a professional sander, and don’t want to have to clear out your entire rooms to sand the floors, then Ya, go my route! Get a hand sander, section off areas at a time, apply the gel stain and then give yourself a pat on the back for making it work!
Any Questions?
I tried to cover everything I could think of, but if you have any questions that were not answered, Please leave them in a comment below or come chat with me on Facebook and/or Instagram.
Thanks for stopping by,
Emily
