Here's Everything You Need to Know About Wood Flooring

Wood flooring options are endless these days—a fact that became abundantly clear when I recently restored the 130-plus-year-old surfaces in my Brooklyn home. The yellow-pine flooring was one of the original details that seduced me into buying my family’s duplex in an Italianate brownstone. The floors had what some might call patina and others would dub problems (tons of holes and gaps between boards). As the author of a book on renovating antique homes, Restoring a House in the City, I wanted to make every effort to save the original flooring.

My contractor, Brendan Duffy, of Duffy’s Floor Services, recommended a two-pronged approach: Restore what we could and replace what we couldn’t. He showed up with a dustless vacuum system equipped with an air purifier. “It’s no longer a dusty, smelly, messy job,” he said, explaining that low-VOC water-based finishes have begun to supplant the old polyurethanes and can be used to create an endless array of looks. To tone down the yellow in my floorboards, we used products from Swedish floor company Bona: DriFast Stain in a mix of one part White and two parts Natural, plus NaturalSeal for a little more white undertone. Duffy topped it off with Traffic HD Extra Matte. “It’s a more natural look with no reflective glare,” says Todd Schutte of Bona. “You can still see the wood, but the low-sheen finish hides scratches and scuffs.”