WoodFlooringGuy.com

I just bought an old house. I ripped up the worn-out carpet in the hall to find hardwood flooring underneath. It extends into the bedrooms. However, the hallway has an area of what appears to be water damage. It is stained, and the boards even seem to have changed in texture and seem to have shrunk some. Can that be sanded down, or will I need to replace those boards?

I spilled a bottle of bathroom cleaner on our engineered floors and it seems to have dulled it a lot. The shine is gone and you can notice a big difference from the rest of the floor. Is there anything that I can use that will make it shine again without having to refinish the whole floor?

My dog peed on our floor and we did not notice this until the next day. After cleaning up the mess, I noticed that the finish had lifted and peeled on one side of the wood slat. The wood in not discoloured but you can see where the finished has peeled. Can I try and apply polyurethane to that one spot or is it better to sand the whole slat and then apply polyurethane to the whole slat of wood?

I am looking at a gymnasium floor which is less than one year old. This is a very nice floor, but it has been flooded from below because someone failed to install a pressure cap on a drain pipe underneath the new hardwood floor. This happened three months ago, and all I see is the large area (50’ x 55’) which has obvious cupping.

My hickory 4-inch-board floors were installed in December 2005 in a brand new home. The boards are not laying completely flat. They have like a wavy appearance and you can feel the waves with your hands. I noticed this probably a month or so after installation. I have been waiting, thinking they might flatten out in time. Also, I hear loud “cracking sounds” coming from the flooring from time to time. Could you tell me what caused this and if there is anything that can be done about it?

We have a new wood floor installed in a new addition, over a newly built crawl space. The floor was installed during a very wet period of the summer (historic floods took place near that time). The floor was flat after finishing. We covered it with drop cloths for a few weeks while trim work was done. When we removed the drop cloths, the floors had cupped. There had also been a problem with drainage that the builder had fixed, but not before it flooded the new crawl space. Now we are stumped – the job is done, we are about to have it inspected, and the builder is saying to wait until winter for the floor to flatten out with the heat. What if it doesn’t? What if it still needs to be resanded and refinished? Whose responsibility is this? We are reluctant to move into the space before this issue is resolved, but how long can/should we wait?

What can cause hardwood floors to buckle in some areas? No water or liquids have been left standing anywhere. The owner of the home is blaming my family and I, since they have occurred after we moved in.

We have ***** hard wood flooring in our family room, dining room and entry hall. When the painter was finishing the front door and sprayed lacquered on it, a lot of it formed as a film on our hardwood flooring. He had it covered by the door about ten feet, but a good part of the rest of the floor got coated with the lacquer. We did not notice it for about three weeks later. How can it be removed?

When I bounce up and down on the flooring by the threshold that was removed, you can see the sub-flooring move up and down about an 1/8″. Could improper nail down of the sub-flooring be a problem?

We took carpeting up from our bedroom which has hardwood floors underneath. When cleaning the carpet from pet urine there are severe dark watermarks. Is there a way to lighten the marks before sanding and refinishing?

I have wood flooring in a bedroom closet that backs on to the bathroom. There’s also a window a couple of feet away from the closet. Dark spots have appeared on the closet floor and some planks are buckling/warping. I got an estimate for repairs from a wood floor company (>$1000!) and they want to replace the boards, then sand and refinish the entire room (the rest of the floor is fine). Is that normal?

… Twice now we had to have the floor that runs from the rear door to the bathroom (10 x 6 ft.) resanded and restained because it started to cup. It is now doing it again, the guy says maybe my contractor didn’t install the new rear door correct and either water or cold is getting in under the floor.

My home is about 50 years old. Our hardwood floors were covered with water for about 3 weeks thanks to hurricane Katrina. The floors are attached to a wooden sub flooring with tongue and groove and a nail every 10 inches. There is some very minor buckling but a black spot appears at all the nails. Can this be removed by sanding?

Providing I cut back the flooring along the walls and address the moisture issue once I determine it (as you assumed the crawl space has a dirt surface and there was no intentional source built into the crawl space for cross ventilation from what I can determine) will the cupping that has already occurred level itself back out or will I have to level it manually (i.e.- sanding)?

We just moved in our house 8 weeks ago and have already had 2 plumbing leaks which have resulted in buckling our brand new solid hardwood floors. I have talked to my installer of the floors and he said it would take 3 to 4 months to completely dry out and with time they would go down. They aren’t coming completely up yet but are very wavy. Do you think that it is truly possible that they may go down? I am hoping that the worse case scenario would be that they can just be sanded and refinished. What are your thoughts?

I just had Polyurethane Maple flooring put in 6 months ago. Today I cleaned the floors with my *** ***** machine. Too much water came out of the machine onto the floor. I now have warps at the end of the planks. How can I correct this?

I left a bucket with clothes cleaning solution on our maple floor. Now there is a dark ring on the floor. How do I get it out?

I bought an older house and decided to have wood flooring installed in the sunken living room (on concrete slab). Before installing the flooring my contractor said there was a spot that was not level, he charged me $400.00 to level the spot before he would install the wood flooring (not laminate). I paid him to level the spot and he installed all but the last two feet wide and twenty feet long section. Within the first week the floor buckled up over that spot. He came back and removed the flooring over the supposed leveled spot and said I must have a water leak. He now wants $500.00 more to replace the flooring over that spot, nothing about even finishing the job (the 2′x20′ section). From everything I’ve read in researching probable causes for this problem, it seems that he didn’t install properly. The spot was NOT leveled and there are uneven levels of concrete where he “leveled” the spot. When he removed the few planks of buckled flooring, the pieces left are cracking if you step on them, where the concrete is unleveled and there is nothing under to support it. I can find no signs of a water leak. What can I do to make the contractor fix and complete the job right? How do I prove it was installers error and not the supposed water leak?

We have a few small stains on our hardwood floor. They are either from water or from paint. Can we sand and recoat just those small spots, or would we have to do the whole floor?

I am wondering what kind of damage a window air conditioning unit could cause. I had a window unit in for about one week during this exceptionally hot and humid summer, and there is an area of flooring that has buckled. Could this have been caused by the weather, or could a small window unit cause a floor to bubble up in such a short period of time?