August, 19 2 2 
SI 
HOW TO ALTER THE COLOR OF FLOORS 
It is Possible to Transform the Appearance of a Room Merely by Giving 
Proper Attention to its Floor Space 
A TTENTION to the floors, in a dec¬ 
orative sense, usually stops short with 
the rugs and carpets. While these 
are the subject of profoundest thought, the 
boards and parquet are often accepted just 
as they are, as a matter of course. The 
stained floor gets a fresh coat of stain, 
though we deprecate the process; the pol¬ 
ished boards are kept polished whether 
they accord in tone and color and style with 
the rest of the room or not. Yet the floor 
can be altered with less trouble and cost 
than, say, the painted woodwork, and the 
difference to the room is no less refreshing. 
The commonest and almost the worst of 
floors are those which have received coat 
after coat of varnish stain and lost in the 
process that transparency which is the es¬ 
sential quality and beauty of a stain. A 
floor of this description spoils any room 
and should not be endured. 
« Of the various ways in which old stain 
can be removed there is none better than a 
strong solution of soda in boiling water. 
This may be brushed on, left a few mo¬ 
ments, and wiped off as the old stain rises 
and dissolves. Plenty of rags are needed 
and a bowl into which the old stain may be 
squeezed, for it must not be allowed to dry 
back into the boards. The edge next the 
skirting needs especial care, because there 
the stain is hardest and thickest. If one 
treatment with the hot soda water is not 
sufficient, it must be continued until the 
grain of the wood shows clear, and the 
boards are of an even brownish tone. On 
no account should this be stained brown 
again; when it is perfectly dry it must be 
waxed and the color can be mellowed or 
deepened to the soft look of old oak by mix¬ 
ing a little raw umber with the wax and 
scrubbing it well into the wood. This first 
polishing, after the old varnish stain has 
been removed, takes time and energy, but 
the resultant floor is well worth the trouble; 
it is permanent and only needs the usual 
polishing to keep it in nice condition. If 
something entirely different from the “nat¬ 
ural'’ brown is wanted, the floor may be 
ebonized or it may be colored a dark green, 
after the old stain has been cleared off in 
the manner described. 
S OME of the receipts for ebonizing 
are too elaborate for a floor treatment, 
but it can be done quite satisfactorily 
by means of an aniline black dye, or ivory 
black in powder form, mixed with size and 
water and applied to the floor in repeated 
coats till the proper depth of black is 
achieved, and then polished in the usual 
way. As for the green, it will be of an olive 
or some soft neutral shade, no matter what 
dye is used on this floor, deeply ingrained 
with brown as it is. Aniline green, which 
is one of the strongest of staining colors, 
will give merely an approximate to that soft 
shade which is described as fumed oak. 
If a clear stained floor or surround is to 
replace one that has been painted in a solid 
color—chocolate or some dull heavy shade 
—the process is more troublesome and less 
sure of success. A paint remover is neces¬ 
sary, or a solution of oxalic acid in water, 
and these are unpleasant to handle and 
liable to burn or bleach the wood unless 
washed off and treated with vinegar to 
neutralize the acid. Planing is more satis¬ 
factory in the end, but as all floors cannot 
be safely planed, and as the process is a 
troublesome one in any case, a better plan 
is to have the floor re-painted. This really 
is the best way to alter the color of our old 
floors. 
There is no need to remove the old paint 
before re-painting, but it is necessary to 
scrub the floor very drastically with hot 
strong soda water in order to remove every 
trace of wax and of dirt. It should then be 
rubbed down with pumice stone (though 
this may be omitted), but a final wiping 
with warm clean water is essential to get 
rid of any remaining hint of the soda, be¬ 
fore re-painting is begun. 
All painted floors need three coats at least, 
with ample time for drying between each. 
The time cannot be specified; it depends on 
the weather and the paint; some paints dry 
quicker than others. A hint of stickiness is 
a sign that the floor is not sufficiently hard 
for a fresh coat of the paint. 
The final coat of varnish should be given 
on a bright day, and dust excluded, as far 
as possible, during the whole process. Car¬ 
ried out on these lines, the painted floor has 
remarkable durability, and it can safely be 
used without a carpet at all. In this case a 
border, varying in width according to the 
proportions of the room, cani be added in a 
contrasting color. For example the floor 
might be painted smoke grey and a border 
done in ivory white, to match the skirting 
and the rest of the woodwork. This would 
make a nice change in a bedroom, where 
an old carpet has been discarded, with here 
and there a few white washable rugs. Or 
let us suppose that the room is to have a 
new carpet of soft blues and yellows and 
creams, and that the existing surround is of 
thick and dingy brown paint. Here the 
re-painting done in pale yellow or old gold 
would just make all the difference in the 
room, and serve to emphasize the tone and 
beauty of the new carpet. 
A floor that has been painted black looks 
quite unlike the floor that has been ebonized 
or stained black, as has already been de¬ 
scribed. There is a depth in paint, a 
greater intensity of black than is compatible 
with the transparent stain. Both are charm¬ 
ing, each in its own way. Whether the 
black is used as an all-over foundation for 
rugs, or merely as a surrounding for carpet 
or felt, the black floor is, in nine cases out 
of a dozen, a good and safe choice. 
There is no point in the usual choice of 
brown or neutral shades for floor painting; 
once a floor has been painted, its resem¬ 
blance to wood is at an end, and, ethically 
speaking, vermilion or blue are as “natural” 
on the ground as they are on the panels. 
There is more show of reason in the matter 
of a bright colored stain; the idea of the 
natural grain and figure of wood in cerise 
or violet is, perhaps, a little startling to 
conventional views. That light color stains 
are not much used is probably due partly 
to this idea, and to the dread of an odd or 
freakish effect. An unnecessary dread, for 
the natural color of the wood prevents a 
stain from ever looking as vivid as paint, 
and as a matter of fact, charming and deli¬ 
cately fine effects can be obtained in this 
way. The real difficulty lies in the fact 
that we rarely get a new floor to work on, 
and new—that is to say untreated—boards 
are here a sine qua non. In the nursery or 
playroom carpets are unusual, and we will 
suppose that an old oilcloth has been taken 
up and a good floor with nice even boards 
is revealed. Here a bright golden yellow 
stain would look well and give a sunny ap¬ 
pearance. 
A WATER stain is the easiest to apply, 
and the yellows that are soluble in 
water, and therefore suitable, are 
gamboge and yellow lake. The colors are 
bought in powder form, and size is added 
to the water in the proportion of about one 
pound of size to half a gallon of water— 
but exact quantities do not matter so long 
as the color is fixed and does not come off 
when the stain is dr}'. Boiling water is 
used for mixing, and the stain, still quite 
hot, should be laid on in flowing coats with 
a big soft brush, and sometimes before it is 
dn,' the work is wiped over with soft cloths 
to give a smooth even quality and to prevent 
hard edges. It dries quickly, and it is bet¬ 
ter to deepen or strengthen the color by 
successive washes rather than to attempt the 
full color in one application. To some ex¬ 
tent the color of these new stained floors 
can be altered; yellow, for instance, makes 
a splendid foundation for a dark blue 
stain, and a thin wash of aniline green gives 
a brilliant effect. Rose color or violet, 
however, would never come true over yel¬ 
low, since the stains are quite permanent. 
Most aniline dyes are suitable for the pur¬ 
pose; they can be had in bright colors for 
water or oil staining. In some, green es¬ 
pecially, a very few grains have enormous 
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