Help needed for aging new pine floorboards!!!!

[chivchiv]

We have recently replaced our floorboards in our front room with new pine floorboards. We are a bit concerned about what to do next. We would like the floorboards to look aged and not "yellow" we have tested a sample floorboard and used caustic soda to age it before putting a clear satin natural oil wax on, but the board looks slightly yellow and we believe would get damaged and show up marks. Can anyone help me with some ideas to age new pine floorboards. thanks in advance Gemma

 

[WoodYouLike]

Pineobards are soft wood and will 'age' (damaged by normal use) quite quickly on their own. Pine normally can turn ugly orange when a natural clear finish is applied to it.
Our clients normally use coloured HardWaxOil Golden Oak to get a darker, warmer colour on their pine floors without the orange or honey colour effect.

 

[Symptoms]

chiv - consider staining the new boards before applying your preferred finish. Do a trial run on an offcut of your floorboard (obviously this will allow you to make choices about which stain {or mixture of stains} to go with on the 'real' floor) - start at one end of the offcut and apply the stain in adjacent bands so that comparisons are easily made. Remember that the first band should be a single coat of stain, the second band should be 2 coats, the third band 3 coats, and so on, as the staining effect gets darker with subsequent coats of stain. Further along the sample piece consider using a different stain (or a mix of 2 stains). Also keep a note of what you're doing for later ref. Rubber gloves on and apply the stain with rag (not a brush) 'cos you can change the rag for each colour change without having to wash-out the brush.

Buy your trial stain in smallest can size and when you've established your preferred recipe obtain the stuff in larger cans sufficient for coverage. We use Antique Pine in 5L cans.

Staining will give you an 'old' colour but on new looking boards buy getting them to look as if they've been walked on for 100 years well .... that for another post.