WoodFlooringGuy.com

I have spent an excessive amount of time preparing my hardwood floors in my home for refinish. I have come to the conclusion (through reading in forums) that oil based polyurethanes are the most durable, therefore, that is what I want to use. My question is, what are your thoughts, as a professional floor refinisher, of M***** Super Fast Drying Polyurethane for floors? Have you ever used it? Is it a long lasting finish? Is it user friendly for amateurs as myself? Would you recommend it? Thank you very much for your opinion.

I would like to refinish the floors in our 100 year old farm house, but I don’t want them to look all shiny and new when I am done. I would like to preserve the old and worn look. Ideas?

We recently purchased Torly’s Laminated flooring with the 4 bevelled edges. It is supposed to be 9.5 mm thickness… What does this thickness refer to, the wear layer or the core? I am asking because we have only had the floor for 5 months and have found it is not standing up to the durability of the laminate in our previous house (only 7 mm thick and much cheaper). I am in fact very disappointed with the durability of the Torly’s floor - we have several scratches on it already, as well as dents, and we have not abused the floor. In fact, we are treating it much more carefully than the previous flooring that was used at our last house. Have you ever had any other complaints about the durability of Torly’s flooring for scratching and denting, etc.?

Our house has dark Brazilian Mahogany hardwood floors. Unbeknownst to me, last year, at the time of purchase, the floors ranged anywhere from 4 1/2 inches wide to 4 2/8 inches wide. Where the boards don’t match up, some kind of gap filler was used. However, over the course of the last year, the filler has been falling out of the gaps, leaving unsightly gaps in the boards, sometimes as wide as 2/8 of an inch. This has occurred particularly in the higher traffic areas, but it is occurring all over the main floor of the house. In addition, where the filler has not fallen out it has cracked, leaving zig-zag looking patterns in the filler. I am at a loss. Is there a product that can fill the gaps that have lost their filler? Will it prevent this problem in the future? Is it something that I can do?

Have you ever heard of a plug cutter that drills a pilot hole for the screw, a countersink for the screwhead, and a plug hole at the same time? I am installing random width, and this plug cutter also has a built in stop to not drill the plug to deep. My father said he used to use one all the time, yet I cannot find one.

I am a reporter for a Canadian TV network. I have read a press release re “Real Wood Floors: Look Beyond the Ordinary” from Canada Newswire, the release was sent by National Wood Flooring Association. I am very interested in making a feature story on the new flooring trend stated in the press release. We are most interested in reclaimed wood floors, hand scraped distressed floors and customization trends like borders, medallions, inlays and mixed media (stone, granite and even leather), etc… Do you have any referrals for me?

I just bought unfinished Brazilian Walnut, 5″ wide. How much color variation should it have? Should there be greens and yellows and red, along with the browns? Is it customary to stain it darker if there are too many color variations?

My home is located in the Kansas City area. I am currently in the process of finishing the basement. My wife would like to have hardwood floors. My main concerns in using a wood floor is moisture, the cold feel, and losing headroom from a built-up floor. I intended to use a subfloor material and install a floating engineered wood floor on the subfloor. I am considering two products to use as a subfloor for the wood floors. The two products are Delta FL (www.deltafl.com) and DRIcore (www.dricore.com). Both products are similar in that they use high density polyethylene (HDPE) as the vapor barrier. The major difference is the DRIcore product a 5/8” wafer board attached to the HDPE and per the Delta FL website, the wood floor can be installed directly on the HDPE. Do you have any experience with these products? Which product do you recommend or is there a better method?

What do you think of floating (glueless) engineered hardwood?

I have been using “X” wet mop for about two bottles of cleaner’s worth. This came recommended to me. There is now a streaky residue on my floors that I would like to remove. The residue is also causing other aesthetic problems. What is the best way to remove the residue? Rest assured the wet mop has swiftly left the area. I would not recommend this product to anyone, even though it seemed great for the first several applications.

Which of these two hardwood floor cleaners is better or are they comparable: Basic Coatings Squeaky Clean or Bonakemi cleaner?

Is there a product that will remove pet urine stains (black discolouration), which were found beneath carpet underlay? The floors are 51 year old oak hardwood, and large areas of the dining and living room are affected.

We are installing 1400 sq. feet of 3/4″ X 5″ wide maple prefinished flooring. Would you recommend using a stapler or nailer?

From Craig’s About Us page, for his business site at FaceLiftFloors.com:
I am excited to let past and prospective customers know that I have made what I consider a major floor finish upgrade. Poloplaz, a U.S. based company that specializes in manufacturing floor finishes, was kind enough to send me samples of their product to test. [...]

As for Waterlox, the top 5 ingredients in each can are:
Mineral Spirits
Specially Processed tung oil
Ester gum
Phenolic resin
Specially Processed Linseed Oil
It is not a pure tung oil finish. However, cooking the oil does not make tung oil “impure”. When it is heated it is called polymerized tung oil. this process helps the oil [...]

I have done a few floors for friends and relatives and have always finished off the last few rows that you can’t get to with the nailer, by hand with finishing nails, hammer and punch. This is very laborious and time consuming. I’m about to lay about 2000 square feet for myself and would like to know what the pros use to do this job. I assume they use some sort of pneumatic brad/finish/staple gun. If so, I would like to go out and buy the best one. What do you recommend and what size and type of nails or staples should it handle?

I am in the process of removing my existing hardwood floors and have a problem. The floor that I am removing is in the kitchen and runs underneath existing cabinets. How do the cut the floorboards where they go under the cabinet? I have a 3 1/2 inch high kick plate at the bottom of the cabinets and cannot fit a sawsall or any other cutting tool that I am aware of underneath the kick plate.