Floor Stain UPDATE

so it turns out we had to go a bit darker than we had originally wanted. we had first liked this golden honey shade for the floors.

I was particularly partial to how it looked on the section of our floors that are maple.

But with all the staining that we had -

we had to replace more floor boards than we had originally planned on -

those cats MAYBE saved us $30,000 but i KNOW they cost us $1200!

At any rate, because of all the patching in of new board, our contractor was concerned that a lighter stain would expose the new boards, rather than blend them in.  as a result, we are going with darker floors.

I gather that is on trend now, and to be honest i don't hate it.  But i do think Jonny much preferred the lighter floors, so i am bummed for his sake that they couldn't happen.