So we are putting in a new kitchen and I have what seems to be an unusual potential solution to a problem.

We have 100 year old maple T & G floors applied directly to the joists. They are in reasonable shape but have some black staining and the original gold color is unacceptable as are all the options we seen for maple. There are a fair amount of face nails with some black staining that don't really bother us and some of the joints aren't particularly tight. We will need some minor repairs but we think we can salvage some old boards from under the cabinets.

We can't afford to take the floor up and start from scratch and flooring over will give us a height differential that we don't want. Our initial thought was to have a pro sand the floors and paint them and then apply 2-3 coats of poly.

We are now leaning towards an aggressive sanding followed by a pigmented interior stain such as pickled white with black and brown added to darken it up a bit. Leave on for a while and wipe off. This will allow us to soften the bad areas without having a monochromatic painted floor that will show everything.

The cabinets and granite tops will be white, with the island in a medium dark cherry. Anyone done this or can you see any land mines that might get us?

Thanks for any ideas and sorry for the long-winded question.

Jack

Maple can be stained but it is difficult to get it to take evenly. It definitely is a job for a professional.

Sounds like you already have your plan. So all I can really add is that you need to make some sample panels out of maple and try your process on them before you actually stain the floor.Bear in mind that black water damage is not going to go away just with staining.

Ask your contractor how he plans to sand the maple. Maple is diabolical to sand and even worse to stain.The sanding needs to be perfect or the stain will show every sanding line and swirl mark.