An extension to the back of the house to enlarge the kitchen required these Draper homeowners to work on the floors. Originally, they hoped to patch in wood to match their existing floors and sand everything to match. When I educated them that their existing floor was an engineered wood that could not be refinished, we had to start looking at new wood. We picked white oak because it would allow us to achieve the look that kept drawing their eyes in all the design magazines - dark floor with white and gray cabinets. We went with rift and quarter sawn because I could get it for less than plain sawn at the time (the homeowners did not have a strong preference on the grain since the dark stain was going to minimize the appearance of the grain, so why not go with the less expensive option!). But what happened as we progressed through the project was a complete 180! I stopped by on the day Jose was doing stain samples after all the wood had been installed, and you could see the smile in their eyes. They talked about how open and light the space felt with the unfinished wood, and they LOVED the grain patterns in the wood. We put down some dark stain samples like they had originally wanted, but they were quickly dismissed. They chose a water-based sealer, keeping the wood as raw-wood looking and light as possible while adding a finish to keep the wood protected. It is not what they had originally envisioned; it is so much better!