Library Floor

After much deliberation I settled on a library floor!  Brodnax Parquet Leman's Flooring in walnut and cherry.  The only problem was that I didn't like the walnut wood against the mahogany:

More wood stains?!?!?

Although I don't want all the wood stains in the room to be exactly the same, I also don't like having a random wood thrown in there: the cherry picks up the gold in the frame and wallpaper and I liked the pattern of the cherry and walnut (as opposed to the walnut/walnut pattern on the right).  But the walnut doesn't seem to "pop" out like I wanted it to.  Even polyurethaning them didn't seem to help much:

Left are out of the bag; Right are polyurethaned

Still not impressing me.  They seem so dull.  And it doesn't tie in to anything else in the room.  I really wanted a mahogany floor, but with so much mahogany wood already in the room I didn't want to have such a dark, "match-matchy" bookcase/floor statement.  It would all blend together and be a mahogany blah.

Then my mother suggested staining the walnut pieces.  Interesting -- why did I assume I had to keep the walnut pieces exactly as they were out of the bag?!?!?  I hate when I forget to think outside the bag.  Don't tell my mother I said this, but she's a genius!

I like the walnut pieces so much better now.  They have a richness that they lacked before.  They do not match the bookcases (for which I am thankful because I didn't want everything to match), but seem to coordinate well enough that they won't look out of place.

So I spent two days staining little octagon pieces....

Day 1 and I have 1/3 of the pieces stained

Now they are all drying so I can start assembling my floors (now I just need a snow day or two so I get the time to do it)!