Hello all, We are in the middle of a remodel and the wood for our floors was delivered last month. They are pre-finished engineered maple with an auburn stain. We have 24 boxes piled in the (gutted) living room. It is my understanding that prior to inallation, the wood should be removed from the boxes and mixed around to avoid ending up with patterns of lighter or darker wood due to different color planks in different boxes. Since this wood is stained...wouldn't the color be consistent enough not to require going through this process.

I have found your site to be invaluable with so many knowledgeable folks with good and practical advice. It is very much appreciated.

you can work out of 3 or 4 boxes when laying the floor. no need to open all of them.

Stain can only change the color of the wood. It's not like paint, which covers whatever is under the coating. So you're still going to have some variation from piece to piece, and likely from box to box.

But what mga posted is accurate. The danger is using all from one box and then grabbing the next one and continuing thus. If you do that you're running a high chance of having patchy-looking flooring.

If I see even a slight variation in the wood as I get started, I will sort the cartons as opened into the variations, then start racking from the stacks.

This is especially important if your working with a wood with a lot of variations and you better open every carton!!!!! I had one job that was going well with racking the variations, and get down to the last 5 cartons, and they were all one color variation, and not sorted out in the cartons, before shipping. Since then, I open all the cartons, with drastic variations and sort. I then will recarton and label them the color, if it is a big job and I won't be using all the wood in one day, to keep the boards from bowing.