WoodFlooringGuy.com

I am refinishing some wood floors. I put the stain on in both rooms, in one room the floor was sticky from the stain. It has been 48 hours and this room is still sticky!

I sanded my living floor over the last two days. Last night I scrubbed the floor to prepared for putting the finish on this morning. I woke up to a disaster. There are areas where the wood looks like it’s dotted in black. Also, a ring where the pale was. Would bleach help, or do I re-sand? Ugh, my back hurts.

I have a new-found deep appreciation for people who work with wood. Here’s our problem: My husband and I have a very tight budget and scraped together the money to install wide plank pine floors. After sanding with a drum sander (which there seems to be various opinions about whether that should have been used), applying ****** wood conditioner and ****** “Puritan Pine” stain, we have terrible looking floors with visible sanding marks (you can feel the raised areas plus some boards are wavy) both on the open area and the edges are horrible – there are loop marks. What now?

I have recently moved into a house which has 1930′s vinyl flooring throughout the ground floor. I had pulled this up and found underneath some sort of board- hammered down with hundreds of nails. I have managed to pry some of this board up with a crows for and a mallet but it is very hard work. Is there an easier way? Underneath is a lovely old oak floor which just needs sanding and finishing. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

I am purchasing a home that has painted hardwood floors. The home is nearly 100 years old, and I have no idea what type of wood it has or how many layers of awful paint have been added to the natural wood. Is there hope for restoring this floor to its natural wood? If not, what type of paint do you recommend so we can at least change the drab colors?

My husband and I took off the carpet, nails, etc. This past weekend my husband and dad sanded the floors, vacuumed the dust up with a shop vac and then used a damp mop to wipe up remaining dust. The vacuuming and mopping in some parts or the room were done against the grain because at the time we didn’t think it mattered. All of the sanding was done with the grain of the wood. Before we stained the floors , we noticed two areas in the downstairs that appeared to have streaks across them. The streaks/lines were the same size as the mop. We lightly sanded those areas again and then stained. The next day, those areas had very noticeable lines/streaks that didn’t blend in with the rest of the floors. Did the mopping or vacuuming cause this? What can be done to fix this problem?

I am installing a bamboo floor that is 5/8″ thick. I cannot find any place near me that rents an air powered flooring nailer (or shims to adjust a 3/8″ or 3/4″ ) to accommodate 5/8″ thick flooring. How should I install it? Pre-drill and use a hammer and nail set? Other options please?

I have a 3/4″ oak floor 10 years old with a oil base ******** Polyurethane. I have lived here since the floor was installed and no wax has ever been used. Cleaned only with damp cloth of water and vinegar. Recently I cleaned floor with damp thinner cloth and about two hours later I applied a coat of the same Polyurethane as original used and a second coat six hours later. The floor looked beautiful for about a month and then bubbles started appearing mostly where the boards join. I did not do any sanding, and mineral sprits may have not dried in the cracks.

My newly uncovered 125 year old 5/4 inch pine plank floors have some high and low undulations. Also,clearly someone used a sander on the floor and removed some but not all the paint before putting on a linoleum floor. There are many random spots with some paint that remains. One contractor told me he had to do the whole floor by hand to remove the paint and to avoid sanding off too much of the surface to flatten the floor. I wondered why an orbital could not be used instead of hand work. I guess it could be if done non aggressively applied. Correct? How would you attack such a floor? Would a floor sander really remove all the “character” from such a floor. What about replacing some missing 5/4 planks with 3/4 inch planks that are shimmed up, or faced on the bottom with a half inch board?

We have clear fir wood floors that we discovered under old shag carpet in our old farmhouse. In some places it is beautiful, but in our living and dining rooms there is glue and paint stains. The worst part of it is they filled the floor with nails (apparently to silence squeaking) before carpeting. What can we do to salvage this floor and make it look nice again?

I have a friend who is in the final stages of building her home, she was basically her own general contractor. The hardwood was started before the drywall was up so when the drywall was installed and the ceilings textured a lot of the paint and putty ended up on her unfinished hardwood. We know that scraping and sanding will take care of the putty but someone has told her that the paint and primer will be difficult to remove since it has probably soaked into the wood. It’s not oil based paint or primer so we’re hoping that soap and water will do the trick. Have you found that this is a problem and are there any suggestions you can give for cleaning to floor in preparation of finishing it.

A few weeks after being installed, entire floor is cupping. These are Pre-finished, 3/4 inch thick, solid oak strip floors. What’s best way to resolve the problem? Can they be sanded down smooth and re-stained & re-finished? What is a normal price point for this sort of job? Also, flooring was purchased at ********, which sells discount flooring materials (which I found out later are often “seconds” or slightly damaged). I’ve seen other installations where the same flooring has been used & they exhibited similar problems with different degrees of cupping. Sometimes just a small patch was cupped & others when larger or separate areas cupped. I’m assuming the flooring to be the same because of the large number of visible “flaws” in the wood such as knots and dark streaks. (Although the flaws are what I found most beautiful about the floors!) Could it be that the wood was still too green when they were pre-finished but the problems not occur until after installation due to trapped moisture? Would the manufacturer be responsible for this? Any info would be greatly appreciated!

I took my floors down to bare wood..sanded, stained them dark, and poly-ed 5 coats of water based poly. Now a few months later, my dog has managed to scrape, and scratch the floor with everyday wear, so that now it looks AWFUL! (the dog gets his nails trimmed monthly at the groomer) How can I get rid of the scratches, and scrapes in the floor without re-doing it all over? I sanded, and filled with a like-stain filler, as well, as filled and poly-ed over, however nothing has worked. They look bad!

I sanded down my HW floors and tested a clear oil-based poly which gave it a light, blonde/golden color. I had read that if you are not using stain that you should use a sealer before the poly.

I put a “Clear-finish” Sanding Sealer on the floors and it made them dark brown! Should I use a chemical stripper to try to remove it or is re-sanding the only way to take it off.

Can a stripper be used on oak floors that have had polyurethane finish on them for possibly 50 years or so. I’m trying to just sand it and I was wondering if we could take some of this off with a chemical first.

I have a design question. We would like to change our living room and dining room floors from carpet to hardwood. The problem we have is that both rooms are an open concept and form an “L” shape. We are not sure how to lay the hardwood to obtain a nice look. If we lay the hardwood length wise in the dining room, the living room pieces will be very short and vice versa.

About 4 months ago we put down new 3/4″ thick oak flooring (unfinished). We thought we followed the proper procedures the whole way through, but we are very quickly noticing something did not go right. After sanding and staining, we applied Olympic Oil Based Sanding Sealer. We followed up with multiple coats of ******** Based Polyurethane. The urethane coating seems to be “bubbling” (but not breaking) between each board and the connections. My guess was that I didn’t buff enough between coats. What do I need to do to repair this?

I would like to know what steps to take to redo a 12 x 10 hard wood floor.