The Easy Way to Restain Hardwood Floors-An Update

February 13, 2020
nicole

Hi! I'm Nicole

Fearless DIY. Sharing building project tutorials and interior design tips. Let’s build something beautiful together. For more projects, design tips and behind the scenes, follow me @designtobuild.nicole

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A question I get asked alot on Pinterest is, how well are my restained hardwood floors holding up? This Pin, although very boring and nothing to it, has received a lot of love on my Pinterest account…Almost four years ago, I did a complete room makeover on my guest bathroom. As part of the process, I updated my hardwood floors with General Finishes Gel Stain. Here’s a picture of the floors before the makeover….

reddish color hardwood floor

You can read all about that project here. (Please forgive the picture quality, I was a little bit newer in my blogging journey). The greatest benefit to this project (other than gorgeous floors) was the fact that, with gel-stain floors, there’s no need to sand. Of course, as you’ll read in the post, I didn’t come to learn this time-saving benefit until after I had fully sanded down my entire bathroom floor. 🙁

Floors sanded down ready for restaining

If you’ve ever worked with gel-stain, you know it is a very thick stain….making it very easy to work with. The key is to apply it on thick and wipe off any excess that you don’t want. You can always add more, if you want it darker. I like to apply gel stain with a paint brush (usually I use a less expensive one, knowing I will most likely throw it away…because I haven’t quite figured out a quick, easy way to clean this oil-based stain off the brush…maybe it’s just my lack of patience). 😉 The gel stain I used for my guest bathroom restained hardwood floors was General Finishes Java Gel Stain.

General Finishes java gel stain can

I will note, this is not a sponsored post…BUT I do love General Finishes products. We have used them on many of our tables….

This one of my dining room table, is the Java Gel Stain wiped off….

table top with gouges and java gel stain

This one gives you a great visual of the top coat…

farmhouse table

desk

General Finishes products are easy to work with and very durable. I especially love their High Performance Top Coat. It dries hard and durable….

High Performance Poly used on restained hardwood floors

I believe this GF Top Coat Poly is the reason my restained hardwood floors have held up as well as they have. Yes, I did use five coats of Poly….but if I did it again, I would only use three. From GF’s website recommendations, three is all that is needed.

So how do my floors look today? For the most part, as good as they did immediately after I stained them….

farmhouse bathroom restained hardwood floors

I say, “for the most part,” because there was a small section, right at the toilet base, that needed some touching up a few months back. But let’s be real, 5 boys (that includes my husband) can be hard on any bathroom floor. A genius invention would be a shield of some sort that raises when they pee! Here’s the little spot that their pee was not very kind to….

toilet with restained hardwood floors

But after a few touch-up swipes of GF Java Gel Stain, it’s as good as new. I would highly recommend this product/staining technique to anyone looking to restain hardwood floors the easy, no mess way.

gel stain on hardwood floors

PIN IT FOR LATER:

PIN it for later pinterest pin

If you do try this technique, please share with me how it goes. I love to see pictures and hear about projects my readers have tackled from the blog.

Until next time,

Happy Building, Friends!!

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