How to Spot Stain a 100 year old Hardwood Floor

How to spot stain a wood floor. With that hideous wood stove finally gone there was no missing the big glaring spot of unfinished floor in the middle of my kitchen! Years ago, when I was in the middle of one VERY cold winter and in the middle of gutting and renovating this entire house, I chose to get my wood stove installed ASAP. I needed the heat! So, when the time came back in 2015 to refinish the floors I didn’t move the several hundred pound stove to stain the floor beneath it.

Fast forward several years and here we are. Goodbye wood stove! (Read my post all about why that is the greatest thing EVER)

Why the bare wood patch is in a diamond shape: The wood stove I purchased and had installed all those years ago was not the wood stove I keep talking about getting rid of. My ex didn’t like the small pretty wood stove I had chosen and replaced it with a giant horrible thing that had to be positioned differently then my little one.

So, way back then, the heat resistant floor mat got shifted and so then I stained around it. I had no idea I was creating a diamond shape lol Anyway….

YAY NO MORE WOOD STOVE!!!…… Oh but now I need to fix the floor.

In my last post about my mini remodel I made my closet bigger and then decided that this should be my next step before working on anything else.

I also happened to be in the middle of my new entryway remodel (See that brand new reveal here!) while I was doing this and it just seemed dumb to paint that space before sanding down these floors and thus totally covering all my new paint with saw dust and nastiness!

I’ve mentioned a couple of times now how I’m moving out of the really hard core rustic look in my home. Not long ago I even sanded down and stained the beams in my home. There wasn’t a whole lot left after that besides my kitchen sink base so I decided to stain that as well while I did this.

It was time to fix the floor!

This is actually not the first time I’ve “spot stained” this floor but this is definitely the largest one I’ve ever done.

The biggest hardship here is that this is truly a hardwood and sanding it down, even with an electric orbital sander, is a true LABOR of love.

I started with medium grit and just gave it hell!

Major upper body workout! I took down the finish well out from the patch and made sure and get down to bare wood in several areas around it.

(The other trick is to understand that no matter what, unless I sand down the entire the floor, the patch will never totally disappear.)

You can see my “diamond” got bigger lol I finished with fine grit and went through several rounds of sand paper.

I also dealt with the damage my old (very heavy) rolling pantry caused to the floor beside my refrigerator. (It was replaced with a Christmas gift from a loved one of this lighter pantry from Amazon and I recycled the old one in my new laundry room.) I also sanded down my kitchen sink base.

With my sanding finally complete (groans) I cleaned my entire first floor because with an open floor plan if you make a mess in one room you make a mess everywhere lol. I swept, vacuumed and mopped the floors with a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water.

(This step is important before staining: giving those old floors a BIG drink and then making sure they are absolutely as clean and dry as possible before proceeding.)

Then it was time to stain. Besides staining out my patches and the kitchen sink base I went ahead and just went over my entire kitchen floor. (Its the same treatment I gave my entryway floors using a stain called Dark Walnut by Minwax.)

I put the stain on liberally with a sponge brush and then just wiped it off after about 20 minutes. I have yet to get myself knee pads and oh how I am annoyed with myself! My poor knees!

The entire floor took me about two hours to stain and then I went back and liberally covered my patch and let it sit again for another 20 minutes. I wiped and hand polished the entire floor with a towel twice to really take off any excess.

Then I brushed on about half a gallon of a satin polycrylic also by Minwax over the entire space.

I think the patch turned pretty good!

You can still see where the patch was but no one else seems to notice it so I’m calling it a win. I’m also not above throwing a rug over it 😉

With the floor and my kitchen sink base complete I taped off and totally covered my lovely floors and moved on to some fun things! Lower and upper cabinet rearranging and storage and some new shelves above my kitchen sink!