I have replaced a patch of 18 year old water damaged white oak flooring (which has yellowed over time) with new white oak flooring that was stained to match as closely as possible. However, once installed and polyurethaned (oil based), the new wood is too dark. Can I apply a stain over the 1st coat of poly to lighten up the shade. If not, what can I do since we don't want to refinish all of the flooring.
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1Adding a rose wine to your white carpet will only make the red wine stain more red, not lighten/remove the original stain. Same thing with applying stain to wood. Only option I see short of a complete refinish would be to sand through the poly, then lightly sand the surface to possibly lighten it, or bleach it, then reapply the poly. Sadly, it will be an iterative process, likely never coming up with a perfect match. Your best bets may be an area rug, a complete refinish, or an experienced refinishing professional who might be able to get a good match & blend.– FreeManCommented Apr 10 at 12:56
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You might consider sanding down the whole floor to "natural oak" color and finishing it all together with your finishing product(s) of choice...maybe including a bleaching agent on the older stuff. I think that would be your best bet to get it all to match... but even that's not guaranteed as the wood is from different sources, different trees, many years apart.– gnickoCommented Apr 10 at 16:31
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Hi, welcome to StackExchange. I've actually covered the issue of blending in new wood to old in at least one but I suspect a couple of previous Answers here. There is unfortunately no ideal solution to this (very common) problem — they keys things being if it matches now it's more than likely not going to match in the future and if you do your best to get it right for it to match in the future you're in for quite a substantial wait (a decade at least).– GraphusCommented Apr 11 at 8:51
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1 Answer
Can I apply a stain over the 1st coat of poly to lighten up the shade.
No.
What stains do
Stain is for darkening wood or altering its basic colouration, altering hue — more red, more orange/amber, more yellowish and so forth. True stains can't lighten wood.
In addition all true stain products are exclusively for use on bare wood, or wood that only has a previous layer of colouring product applied.
Once even a single layer of poly has been applied you need to switch to alternate colouring means; but again, only to shift colouration and darken.
To lighten at this stage would require the addition of white/light pigments on top. Such a product is A, not a stain, and B, would substantially alter the look of the wood (greatly reducing clarity in exactly the way you're probably seeing in your head right now — think looking at the wood colour through a glass of clean water versus another with a drop or too of milk added).
What now??
Unless you're willing to tackle this by making the rest of the floor match the new area, you need to strip back the new wood, at least partially, and try again. Sorry!
Why did this happen?
The issue here is basically that a test wasn't done in advance to preview the finished result.
It is finishing 101 that one pre-tests a proposed finishing regimen to see what the final outcome will be; this becomes doubly vital when trying to match in a repair1.
When going for a colour match to existing wood this cannot be guaranteed to be a fast process (even with fast-drying products) because it could easily become an iterative process, but it remains vital nonetheless. Let's be blunt here, "Finish pre-tests take a long time." is not a valid reason not to do them especially where a pretty exact colouring is needed.
Had even a single test been done it should have highlighted that the stain colour chosen, or the heaviness of its application, would result in a too-dark result once poly was applied. Meaning that either a different stain colour needed to be selected, or the first stain product needed to be diluted somewhat or had to be wiped-back more thoroughly.
Additionally, because the wood itself will naturally darken over time IMO the ideal colour to aim for here was slightly lighter than an exact match. This is so that, hopefully, over time the new wood and the finish on top of it, would age ("mellow") to the same degree as the rest of the floor and eventually come to a very close or exact match. There are unfortunately no guarantees with this sort of thing as wood is a natural product and highly variable.
1 Such tests are usually done on scraps of the same wood, usually available whenever woodworking is done; where scraps are not available for any reason the backs of project pieces are a very good alternative. Note in either case the test surfaces must be smoothed, sanded etc. to exactly the same level as the show surfaces of the project pieces or the results will be different, Markedly different in many cases involving staining, because of how stains interact with sanded surfaces.
