Hello,

We had Graf Brothers unfinished engineered oak installed and site finished. When our floor guy water popped a sample, he said it flared too much so that he wasn't going to water pop it. He said that he had never had a floor react that way, flaring so much. He has significant experience and a good reputation. He applied the stain and it was very light and uneven. I insisted that it be remedied and he then water popped the stained wood and applied another coat of stain with some ebony added to darken it. It is still very uneven. I emailed a photo to my kitchen contractor and he said it doesn't look right and to not let him apply the sealer until he can show me that he can even out the color. My question is, does anyone know why the wood would have flared excessively? Any recommendations how this can be rectified? If he sands it and starts over, I would think that it would again flare too much if water popped to get the stain to take evenly, so would sanding it even help? Thanks for your help. I'm trying to attach a photo but when I click the Img button all it does is insert text that says "[img]" and doesn't let me attach a photo. Same with the url button.

Patti:

You'll need to upload the picture to a photo sharing site like Flicker, Photobucket and others. Then they have codes you can copy and paste into the message area here. Hard to understand why this would happen, especially with the name and quality Graf has. Wood is wood. What could be different? Unless there's some kind of contamination involved or it was final sanded with too fine of a grit.

Looks pretty even to me. What the heck is flair? never have heard that term used in wood flooring, ever. There looks to be a high percentage of rift and quartered material (which Graf is one of the best at). Rift and quartered boards will take the stain differently than plain sawn boards. It looks like a lot of the variation is in the wood itself , stain will only tone it down it wont eliminate it all together. The beauty of wood floors are that every piece is unique and no two floors are exactly alike.

Okay, thanks for the feedback. It's good to know that. It's not what I'm used to seeing, so I thought it was not right. Probably what I'm used to seeing doesn't have all the rift and quartersawn this does, which does add to the beauty.

Flare is how the grain raises when water popped. It flared too much, more than normal, making it too rough. I don't know if it's an industry term or just a word my floor guy used.

the" flare' can be knocked down running over the floor with buffer and white pad or by just buffing the stain on.