WoodFlooringGuy.com

I found your web site while searching out how to manually try and fix several pet stains my dog has made on my hardwood floors. I have floating hardwoods that I believe were put in on top of a tile floor. Unfortunately the dog has had a couple of accidents in his old age. There are three none bigger than the palm of your hand. I don’t want to have to replace the floor if not absolutely necessary (I’m not sure I could even find replacement boards since the floor was put in prior to my owning the house). Is there anything I can do cleaning wise to try and pull the stain out of the wood? I did read on your site one of you visitors tried hydrogen peroxide and was able to bleach the stain out of their wood but I’m not sure if that will work for a pre-finished floating floor systems. Do you have any suggestions?

Does pre finished 3/4 - 2 1/4 birch wood have to be “aired” in the house before being installed. If yes, how long? Individually or just open the cardboard box on the ends?

I just had natural red oak floors installed in my home. The stair nose color/shade (it is connected to the dinning room wood floor) does not look good next to it. The color of the stair nose looks more like a light tan colored wood, not like a red oak and it does not nearly have the beautiful shine the prefinished flooring has. The company just added a water based tinted polyurethane coat to help the color of the stair nose but I still do not like it and it did not help the color very much . I feel that all the poly has to be sanded off and a stain applied directly to the stair nose to help match the wood that it is next to. What do you think?

We just purchased a house that has ceramic tile flooring in the living room. It is on top of a hardwood floor. I don’t know if there is a layer protecting the wood, but from peeking on one corner it looks like it was laid directly on the wood. Is there any hope of salvaging the wood floors underneath? Can you give us any tips for removing the tile?

Currently we have carpeted stairs with open risers from our lower level to upper level. What is the best way to replace with hardwoods?

Q: The old farm house we just moved into has hard wood floors, and whatever type of coating they used is peeling and scratches easily. Any idea what kind of coating they used? When the coating peels away it is kind of sticky.
A: Sounds like they may have tried applying varnish over top of a […]

What’s the best way to transition from hardwood to carpeting?

I had hardwood floors installed in 2005. My sister in law said to wax them which I did. Grand children walked on wet floors carrying their fuzzy blanket; hence disaster. Please tell me if there is anyway to clean and remove wax and then if possible to Polyurethane them. The floors were just waxed.

My husband is installing our engineered wood flooring by gluing it down. We have a concrete slab with linoleum, which he coated with a concrete leveller rather than remove (we didn’t want to mess with asbestos). We are about 1/3 finished with our front room and when walking on it, I noted there is a spot where the floor is uneven slightly and the wood is not glued down. When I stepped on it, the two boards over this unlevelled ground ever so slightly sunk and made a crack/snap noise. It is too small to crack the wood but enough that when walked over will make a noise every time. What can we do? I don’t want to have to pull up everything we have down already to level the floor. Can we nail each board into the concrete, using a drill to make the hole first? He also suggested actually cutting out one section of the floor and replace it after levelling the floor? That doesn’t sound ideal to me, because I know it won’t go unnoticed.

I own a painting company and I am doing a job for a home owner who is concerned about paint dripping on his unfinished Brazilian walnut hardwood floor. The installer told him that the paint can not be removed and I need to know if this is correct or not. This floors still are going to be sanded and finished when I am done painting.

I recently installed laminate flooring throughout my home. Upon completion of the project I realized that I had some gaps around my door frames. After some further investigation I realized that I should have used an undercut saw to take off the bottoms of the door frames so the floor could go underneath. It was too late however as the floor is already down. The gaps range anywhere from less than an inch to around 1.5″ I cut small pieces from my off-cut sections of flooring and glued them into the gaps. Now there are noticeable (to me) seams at all the points where I glued in the “patches”. Any suggestion on what to fill in the seams with to make them less noticeable? I tried some laminate floor crack filler/repair that I bought at a local home improvement store but it doesn’t match the floor very well.

I have relatively new oak stairs that were finished very poorly by the contractor who built the home. 6 years later, the poly is still in good shape mechanically, but I would like to improve the cosmetics. Since this a small but time consuming job, I was going to put in the labor myself when the family is away at the lake this summer. I plan to simply remove the small strips of decorative molding under each tread and re-install new as refinishing these pieces is not worth the hassle. I have a compound mitre saws and pneumatic brad and finish nailer, etc. Hence only the treads will be refinished. would you consider a chemical stripper for this type of work, or do you prefer sanding for all refinishing work? Have you ever used a detail sander around the balusters (‘pickets’) or always a hand-scraper?

I recently had my oak floors refinished with water based poly. I would rather have had Oil but because of time constraints at that time I opted for the water. I want to put a couple of coats of oil on top. Can I just rough up the floor and add coats over water?

I sanded a pre-finished birch floor. The previous finish did not come off entirely where the ends of the boards joined as they were ever so slightly offset. To remove the remaining finish in those areas, I used a random orbital palm sander. It looked fine until I applied 2 coats of clear water-based semi-gloss polyurethane. Now that the floor shines, the spots at the ends of boards now look like little dents when light is reflected. I was so disappointed when I noticed this. I very much doubt there is anything I can do to fix this except to sand the entire floor again. I was thinking about using a satin finish over the semi-gloss for the remaining coats to reduce the sheen. Is it alright to apply satin poly over the semi-gloss?

How do I remove dull spots on my hardwood floor?

I’m considering putting 5″ maple engineered floors on the 2nd story of my house (plywood subfloor).But I’m worried that when the power goes out for a week of two after a hurricane the humidity in the house will cause the floors to be ruined. If so, will they come back to normal? Also, is engineered flooring much better resistant to buckling etc.? Is there a particular species of engineered wood better then another?

Can I glue down the wood look laminate floor? Will it buckle like someone told my husband?

I have carpeted stairs and painted stringer with shoe (looks like) over it. I am replacing all painted trim in my house with wood so it can be stained. How do I strip the paint off the carpeted stringer without damaging the carpet?

We are in the process of putting oak wood floors in our cabin. The grade wood we chose is full of knot holes. We love the look. Our question is how do we fill the knots prior to finishing? What is the best method?

We are moving soon and would like to repair any scratches we might have left in the wood floors in our apartment. The floors were not in good shape when we arrived and moving furniture improperly has made them worse. I don’t want to do anything too difficult as I am not a professional and I don’t want to spend the money. However I do like the landlord and would hate to leave them in their current condition w/o trying to help. Do you have any suggestions that would make them look nice? I can’t remove any boards or sand and polish. Would the wood putty or fillers work?