Restoring a worn look to an old pine floor.

[murrmac]

Shortly embarking on a project to convert an old warehouse to a restaurant, and the owner wants to preserve the old grey weathered look of the floor boards ( me, I would stick plywood down and lay carpet, but what do I know )....

Anyways, one of the first jobs will be to skim off the protruding knots which are quite prevalent, and which will present a trip hazard unless levelled.

No problem there, the Fein Supercut will take care of it, but I want to restore the old grey look, don't want fresh looking patches everywhere.

So, any advice on how to restore the old weathered look ? I don't expect a perfect match, obviously, only time will do that, but in the meantime ...

TIA

 

[SeanJ]

a couple of things that come to mind is that you probably won't get away with colouring patches locally if your referring to skimming these knots off - you'll only get a a uniform look by treating the floor as a whole IMO. Your weathered look I guess is probably quite even in tone (whatever that colour may be) and you'll only really get convincing tones in pine with the help of water stains, obviously you'd have to experiment with colours and dilutions, you'd need to spray or roller them, ideally with someone else absorbing the excess left from the applying of it.
It's no simple task staining softwood pleasingly, esp when you want an 'aged' look, a white pigmented stain mixed with any of the standard 'antique' colours can help tone down liveliness in pine usually i find. Liberon do a good range of good water stains off the shelf, more cost effective would be to use a dedicated supplier like morrells though.

 

[Jacob]

If the knots have to go so be it, but as little woodwork as possible would be good..
I'd look at giving the floor a good scrub. I used a simple Hoover floor scrubber on ours, with sugar soap in the mix instead of floor shampoo whatever it is. It was only a domestic machine but did it really well.
Scrubbing does three things - cleans (obviously), evens out the colour, when dry provides a nicely absorbent surface for whatever you want to put on. Osmo oil in our case. If you have a few days to let it dry then linseed would be good.
What you end up with is an old worn floor but a bit tidied and clean. Looks good.

 

[SeanJ]

that above sounds like great advice

 

[murrmac]

Thanks to you both, I think Jacob's advice is spot on, the knots most certainly do have to go, and the floor scrubbing sounds just the ticket. Thanks for the heads up about sugar soap.

AFAIK, the owner doesn't intend to apply any finish whatsoever to the boards ...I would imagine that this would necessitate at least a weekly scrub ...