Maple hardwood is an exquisite flooring that positively affects the financial value of your property. Additionally, the floors look so good and provide a shade of unbeatable warmth. This assertion is why you want to stain maple hardwood floors beautifully to get the best of its appeal.
Staining a hardwood floor will give it a new lease on life. It’s advisable to enlist experts to stain your hardwood floors to avoid mistakes. However, you can save a lot of money by doing it yourself.
Therefore, we’ll provide you with tips for staining maple hardwood floors in this article. It’ll detail step-by-step ways and also highlight the materials you need. Let’s go.
What You’ll Need to Stain Maple Hardwood Floors
The materials you’ll need to stain your maple hardwood flooring include the following:
- Edger or palm sander
- Sander
- Random orbital buffer
- Palm sander or edger
- Hardwood floor stain
- Applicator (if you’re not using a buffer to apply stain)
- Blue tapes
- Carpet pads (if you’re using a buffer to apply stain)\
Related Article: How Much Does Hardwood Floor Installation Cost in Toronto?
Staining Maple Floors – Step by Step
The procedure for staining maple flooring includes sanding, cleaning, water popping, and applying the stain. And we’ll explain each step explicitly below:
Sand The Maple Hardwood Floor
The first step in this maple flooring staining guide is sanding the maple floor. Any mistakes you make in sanding will appear bright and clear once you start staining and finishing the maple floor.
Don’t skip grits in your sanding sequence. Instead, follow proper sanding processes and select the appropriate grit sequence.
Whether or not to screen maple is a frequent question from several homeowners. We won’t ask you to or not to screen. But we suggest you don’t seal the wood grain regardless of your decision.
Sweep the Floor
After sanding, give the floor a thorough cleaning. The light hue of maple means any dust residuals on the floor will be more noticeable as soon as you apply stain to the floor.
Therefore, you should vacuum the floor at least twice. This routine will guarantee all dirt has been eliminated. A steam mop is an excellent alternative because it cleans quickly and effectively.
Water Pop the Wood
This level is a critical stage in trying to stain maple hardwood floors. It requires you water popping the maple wood. After being sanded, the wood’s grain is sealed. And there’s literally no way for the stain to penetrate.
This blockage is usually due to the accumulation of sawdust and other small wood particles in the wood’s pores.
Remember you started the process using low-grit sandpaper to level the wood. You also used a finer grit to polish the surface. The wood becomes denser, less vulnerable, and more stain-resistant because the grain fibres have been tightened.
However, water popping comes to the rescue here. Wood’s pores and grain give way when wet. Water popping increases the grain and improves maple wood’s capacity to take on a stain.
There’s equal stain application when you aid maple floors with water popping. The procedure also helps highlight the stain colour and leaves a lovely finish without any visible sanding marks.
Water is mainly unfriendly to wood. And it’s no different when you buy maple hardwood flooring.
Therefore be careful not to oversaturate the wood while water is popping. Also, ensure the even distribution of the water over the maple floor.
The blotchy areas under the stain will become more apparent if the water spreads unevenly across the floor. And it may require more effort and time to re-sand the wood if this occurs.
Therefore, we recommend using a T-bar to help prevent the wood from getting too wet. A T-bar resembles a broom with a long handle and an end piece cut at a right angle to each other.
Ultimately, use well-sanitized water instead of tap water. Chlorine and other chemicals in tap water may cause adverse reactions when in contact with wood stain or finish. Therefore, ask for professional water purification help even if you’re undertaking maple floor DIY staining.
Colour or Stain as Desired
The last stage on how to stain maple hardwood floors is dying your floor. Traditional resin-based stains require a light coat of application. If you want your stain to seem consistent, add a conditioner.
Applying the stain to the maple floor without first testing it on a test panel is a surefire way to end up with uneven coverage. Please test first.
When staining, it’s important to remember earlier colour mixes. You want consistency in colour; therefore, you should be able to reliably recreate the shade you used to make your sample pots.
It takes two individuals to apply stain to space effectively. One person applies the dye, while the other removes any traces of it left on the surface.
Over time, a darker spot may appear in any overlapping floor section. Therefore, you can use blue tapes to avoid such overlapping during staining.
You’ll need to move rapidly over the floor because colours dry quickly. In addition, apply a standard resin stain on top of the dye to seal the paint and create an excellent layer of protection against fading.
Seal the floor with a coat of dewaxed shellac sealer or any other type once the resin stain coat has dried. But please avoid using water sealers. Finish the floor with anything you like afterwards.
While doing all of these, from steps one to four, you need to exercise caution. You must use protective gear when sanding the wood or working with finishing materials. Also, ensure there’s sufficient airflow.
Related Article: How Much Does It Cost to Install Laminate Floors?
Final Thoughts
Trying to stain maple hardwood floors is time-consuming and labour-intensive. But you’ll do well if you can pay close attention from sanding to dying.
Your home’s attractiveness with maple wood would be unbeatable. But the first step to getting to the staining point is getting quality maple hardwood floors. And we specialize in that sale.
We at LV Flooring are the best dealers in hardwood floors. We have the best rates and designs for Maple hardwood for you too. Check out our collection today!
