Hi,

I refinished the living room floor, sanded to bare wood, stained dark, 1 coat de-waxed shellac, 4 coats oil based polyurethane. Looks great. I'm extending the wood floor into the kitchen and want to use water based polyurethane instead to reduce the total time. I still intend to sand bare, stain dark, and 1 coat de-waxed shellac, so the only difference would be the polyurethane.

Is this a bad idea - will there be a visible difference at the transition from the living room to the kitchen? Thanks for any help.

They MAY match for a little while, but the oils will "amber" and then the two floors will definatley look different.

And remember each can of stain is different from the next, the floors may look slightly different if they are done at different times/with different cans

We once did an upstairs hallway and master, stained and finished it. The following year homeowner asked us to come back and do the other 3 rooms upstairs. He couldn't get all the furniture out at once and had us do one room, we installed sanded stained and finished it, perfect match.
Came back two weeks later to do the other two rooms (all the wood was delivered at once, we mixed more than enough stain to do the whole project and left the gallon with him) when we did the other two rooms it was allot darker.
After talking to the stain manufacture he asked when we did phase on, it was late march, and phase two was early April. he then asked about the weather, phase one was really cold and snowing, phase two was close to seventy degrees. So the humidity and temperature was affecting the dry time of the stain (quick dry stain too) so it was making the color come out different.
We wound up re-sanding the room and lightning the stain a bit with some neutral until it matched

I had a feeling the ambering of oil-based might create a noticeable difference over time. Thanks for your advice.

The living room was a year ago, and I saved the stain which was new and so is now a year old or a little more. It's a Minwax 250 VOC compliant stain and looks identical on a couple of test boards so I think (hope) it will match pretty well if not perfectly.

I think sheen and build will be a bigger problem opposed to color...

The stain should be fine if there isn't hard crust at the bottom of the can. But yes, water based finish is going to look different than oil based finish.I might recommend Lenmar brand OMU which is a great urethane and has very good dry time. You can possibly do two coats in a day if the temp and RH are good.Also, maybe try doing a coat in the morning and one just before you go to bed if possible.

I dont know if would help now but Ciranova do a Reactive Stain?

"Ageing stain specially fit for the ageing of wood containing tannin such as oak and pine. Gives a rustic aspect to the wood. Can be treated afterwards with oil, lacquer (spraying) or wax. Available in 16 standard colours"

We are the north american suppler for the Ciranova product range and we are getting this in march.

ciranova-na.com/collections/02-01-finish-protection-colours/products/reactive-stain

Have a look but we have tested them and seem to be one of the best stains out there.

Daniel

Yes, it will definitely look different if part is water based and part oil based. It will look different initially and the diffs will probably magnify over time, as others have indicated (due to the amberizing).

Debbie Gartner, The Flooring Girl

You're using the de-waxed shellac, so that gives you the color that you would get using oil. I have had some customers who wanted to match an existing stained floor, but didn't want to use oil polyurethanes. I used Bona Dri-fast sealer (oil-based) over the stain, to bring out the color, and then put two coats of water-based polyurethane over that. In these cases, the customer was willing to accept that over time, the existing oil finish would continue to amber. The color match worked.

Basic Coatings used to have an ambering agent to add to their water-based finishes. I've not used their products, and I have not heard any other contractors talk about whether the product worked well enough to be acceptable.