Hello everyone,

I have a multi-part question about finishing a maple floor.

My husband and I are planning to lay a maple floor. We’ve done this before. He has a lot of experience and the last time we did such a job (our previous house) it turned out beautiful, except for one thing – the floor yellowed. We left that house 11 years after laying the floor. This time we want the wood to remain as light as possible.

We finished that first floor with a polyurethane, which was very easy to use. It flowed out very nicely and leveled itself like we had sprayed it, although we rolled it. It was a big job, but worth it.

After the first sanding, we combined sanding dust with a diluted version of the finish and applied that to the floor. That filled all the cracks and tiny spaces between boards and the leveled floor looked very even. When that “filler” coat dried, we sanded lightly and applied 2 coats of full-strength finish.

I understand that if we use a water-based poly, that the wood will not yellow. But I’ve gotten lots of warnings about using water-based – that it’s much harder to apply than regular polyurethane and that it does not level well at all and leaves lots of bubbles and unevenness that needs to be sanded out meticulously.

Does anyone have experience applying water-based polyurethane to a maple floor? Can the same “filling” technique be used with sanding dust and water-based finish that we used with regular polyurethane? Or can we use another “filling” method and apply water-based finish on top of that?

Or should we buy pre-finished flooring which is advertised to be finished with water-based? I worry that the pre-finished variety will result in unfilled spaces between boards and ends. We want the same “filled” floor that we had before so that spills and dirt dont get into the crevices.

Any advice you can give us would be appreciated.

Thanks,

VL