Hardwood floor stain. Or, a brown by any other name...

 After trolling chat rooms and Google image results examining homeowners' hardwood floor colors, I picked three stain colors to sample. During the floor stain research journey, I learned a few things:

• The type of hardwood you have greatly affects how the stain will look. White oak and red oak will show the grain regardless of stain, and red oak tends toward a reddish cast regardless of the stain color. Pine will soak up stain exceptionally well, but it's a softer wood, prone to faster wear and tear.
• Some homeowners attempt all sorts of formulas to arrive at the desired color. 1:1, or 2:1 or 1:1:2 and other such mixes aren't unheard of in the homeowner forums. The willingness to go to such lengths tends to correlate with 'refinishing our floors' being the only thing the homeowner is doing.
• Water-popping the wood can make a stain richer when it's applied. Basically, you put water on your floor to open up the grain. Apparently this is not for the amateur. 
• When you're staining old wood and new wood, you're likely to see some variation in how the stain appears. You're assured, 'only you will notice.' This is, actually, not that reassuring.

So let's see how our stain choices all stack up.

Left to right we have Red Mahogany, Dark Walnut and Jacobean.

We have white oak floors, and initially we thought we wanted super dark floors, like, nearly black. But we eased off on that idea before choosing the stain colors. Personally, I love the Red Mahogany. It has hints of red in it (duh), which the mister is not a fan of. Now I knew he wasn't a fan of that, but I was dying to see what it would look like, and secretly wondered if he would be all, 'What is that gorgeous shade? We must have it!' Alas, that did not come to pass.

Dark Walnut is okay, but sort of, I don't know, average. Meh, unremarkable. Like the mousy-haired chick you secretly wish would go lighter or darker already.

Then there's Jacobean. But first, a word about pronunciation. Everyone (by that I mean our builder, and one other person) refers to this as jake-uh-bean. All I had was the sound of the word when I went to look at stains, and when I saw Jacobean my I-kid-you-not first thought was, I wonder if they're saying this correctly. Okay I just lied to you. My first thought was actually, I wonder if they know they're mispronoucing this word. It's jak-uh-bee-uhn. Swear. It's possible I might have to call Minwax to verify this. Especially if we choose this one.

Yes, if we choose this one. I realize I just said two of the three aren't really doing it for us. We've only, however, seen the stain in the 5:30pm light, and we need to see it in some other views. We have to talk about finishes (satin, gloss, etc.) and how that affects the color. We need to know if the wood will (or should) be popped first.

Basically, we need to over-think this for a couple more days. Stay tuned!