Make sure you communicate clearly with your clients about the variability inherent in acid staining. Simply duplicating a floor is not doable, but Gaye Goodman sees that as an asset, not something to apologize for. “Most professional stainers consider the wide variability of results to be an advantage because it means that no two clients’ floors will be alike. Similar, perhaps, but never alike.”
When applying acid stains, always use all-plastic spray bottles, so your stains don’t start reacting to things before they’ve even hit the floor.
Test, test, test! Find an out-ofthe- way corner on your slab and run dilution tests to see what concentration of stain is going to yield the colors you’re after. Jeroen H.F. Kaijser Bots, owner of North Carolina-based EuroFloors, says he tries samples with 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent stain solutions. And don’t forget to test the sealer you plan to use as well, he says, since the sealer will affect how the colors look in the finished floor.
