I recently sanded my hardwood oak floors down to bare wood. I applied a first coat of minwax oil based stain, wiping it up with rags after letting it sit for 5 minutes, and let it dry over night. Everything looked great. Applied a second caot in the same fashion the next day, wiping it up as I went. Apparantly I did not wipe up enough when I did the second coat, because 48 hours later it was sticky and tacky to the touch. I then wiped down the whole area with 3 cans of mineral spirits and about a million rags. This seems to have helped a lot, but there are still trace amounts of stickyness throughout the floor. Additionally, the process of wiping the whole floor with mineral spirits has lightened some areas of the floor (removed some of the stains color) and now it appears a little blotchy. No one else sees the blotchiness, but after two days scrubbing on my hands and knees I can see it. Before I spend another day wiping down the floor with mineral spirits to remove any excess pigments from the surface of the wood, could I apply a coat of stain to essentially dissolve these remaining pigments and then wipe them up with the newly applied stain? This would also even out any blotchiness that was caused from my first pass with mineral spirits.

Hello... We need ideas for a our kitchen floor. We remodeled our kitchen 7 years ago, granite, high-end finishes, etc... we made a mistake on the floor. We installed ceramic with fairly large grout lines. We've found the floor is very hard to keep clean. Especially in our house. Our kitchen is very central to our house and gets a lot of traffic and activity. We also have 4 very young children so the floor see's a lot of dirt, food, etc. It is very hard to keep clean. We'd like to install something new that is more cleanable. In fact, cleanable is the # 1 goal but appearance is also important. Ceramic is also very hard and not a great walking surface. We've thought about wood as we love the look but I'm not sure it would be an improvement in the cleanability factor. Also not sure it would hold up with spills and such. What are good materials/products for this type of scenario? Thanks!!