The Easy Way to Restain Hardwood Floors-An Update

A question I get asked alot on Pinterest is, how well are my restained hardwood floors holding up? This Pin, although very boring and nothing to it, has received a lot of love on my Pinterest account…Almost three years ago, I did a complete room makeover on my guest bathroom. As part of the process, I updated my hardwood floors with General Finishes Gel Stain. Here’s a picture of the floors before the makeover….

You can read all about that project here. (Please forgive the picture quality, I was a little bit newer in my blogging journey). The greatest benefit to this project (other than gorgeous floors) was the fact that, with gel-stain floors, there’s no need to sand. Of course, as you’ll read in the post, I didn’t come to learn this time-saving benefit until after I had fully sanded down my bathroom floor. 🙁

If you’ve ever worked with gel-stain, you know it is a very thick stain….making it very easy to work with. The key is to apply it on thick and wipe off any excess that you don’t want. You can always add more, if you want it darker. I like to apply gel stain with a paint brush (usually I use a less expensive one, knowing I will most likely throw it away…because I haven’t quite figured out a quick, easy way to clean this oil-based stain off the brush…maybe it’s just my lack of patience). 😉 The gel stain I used for my guest bathroom restained hardwood floors was General Finishes Java Gel Stain.…

I will note, this is not a sponsored post…BUT I do love General Finishes products. We have used them on many of our tables….

This one of my dining room table, is the Java Gel Stain wiped off….

This one gives you a great visual of the top coat…

General Finishes products are easy to work with and very durable. I especially love their High Performance Top Coat. It dries hard and durable….

I believe this GF Top Coat Poly is the reason my restained hardwood floors have held up as well as they have. Yes, I did use five coats of Poly….but if I did it again, I would only use three. From GF’s website recommendations, three is all that is needed.

So how do my floors look today? For the most part, as good as they did immediately after I stained them….

I say, “for the most part,” because there is a small section, right at the toilet base, that could use some touching up. But let’s be real, 5 boys (that includes my husband) can be hard on any bathroom floor. A genius invention would be a shield of some sort that raises when they pee! Here’s the little spot that their pee has not been very kind to….

But as for the rest of the floor, three years later and I cannot complain. I would highly recommend this product/staining technique to anyone looking to restain hardwood floors the easy, no mess way.