Advise on Cyprus Pine flooring

Hello Everybody,
I am a first time poster and in the process of buying my first home in Sydney. The place we intend to buy is about 50 years old and is a brick home. As you would have guessed, this home requires a lot of work....but I am ready to put in some efforts and make it a home.

Some of my questions may sound stupid but please bear with me as I am a new migrant and have always lived in a unit before.

1. THe floorboards in this house are Cyprus pine and are presently covered by a carpet which I intend to remove. We have always loved the dark color of Jarrah flooring and were wondering if we can sand - polish and stain these floorboards to the dark jarrah color?

2. If we decide not polish the existing timber, can we install new floating timber floor over the existing one to speed up things and get the color we want?

3. Are IKEA floorings any good? as the rates were about 47$ for 2.38 Sq M in comarision to the other rates I read in this forum of about 60-130 $ per sq M.

THanks for your help

Welcome to the woodies forum mate.

Cypress Pine is a really good flooring. Any timber can be stained lighter but I wouldn't bother personally the Cypress looks great just polished. Check the archive here to find out more about polishing your floor. There are many finishes out there that produce a better result than Poly so look into it.

I would avoid a floating floor if I was you. They are soft and mark up easily and you can't do anything about fixing them up when they get marked.

A good stain to darken a floor is Black Japan thinned with a bit of turps however you won't get it to look like Jarrah as there will be too many knots and colour variations in the Cypress.

Good luck with it

Studley

A good floor sander should be able to show you samples of staining.

Pine will look good stained. A walnut stain looks great on Pine. This picture shows a pine floor with a walnut tinted coating.

To go darker you would have to direct stain the floor before coating. Find a sander with experience of this as it requires some know-how. Expect to pay a fair bit for his expertise and the extra time it will take.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/2518/satinpp0.jpg