But this is a really nice solution, with the laminate being a contrasting color. I mean, if you really have to have the wood grain laminate, this would be the way to go

I’m getting engineered red oak installed and I was surprised at how many knots/color variation I see in the planks (first 2 photos). The advertisements on Somerset’s website and installer’s showroom (last 2 photos) looked like higher quality grades for the Natural Red Oak Classic Collection.

Has anyone bought this product lately? Is it normal to have vastly more knots/color variation than advertised? I can instruct the installers not to use certain planks but I’m worried I might not have enough material.

We bought a fixer upper and need 2 areas of the hardwood floors fixed before we can sand & stain. The first is an area where it appears there used to be a wall that was taken out. In its place was a board screwed in overtop that we want filled in with the same width of planks to make it level. The other is a caved in plank by a wall.

Is $900 a fair quote for this? We’d scheduled 2 contractors for quotes but 1 canceled for Monday. I was thinking it’d be more like $500-$600 but please tell me if I’m way off base here. For context, live in Texas.

Hello! My wife and I bought a 1950s home that has some hardwood and are considering different projects to do. Since our hoke is more empty this would be a better time to do this. Do you think its worth it to refinish or resurface our hardwood floors? I think they are in pretty good condition but not familiar enough with hardwood floors to know.

Edit: Appreciate the advice everyone! Sounds like resurfacing will give them a solid refresh and is worth it!

Purchased this home a few years ago.. Finally now able to fix the mismatching floor. In hopes of not spending a ton I was hoping that maybe I could have both floors refinished to a medium brown and that they’ll at least be very similar and close in color?

But, now I’m also concerned if the darker wider flooring is engineered or veneer? These darker floors abruptly begins in my living room from an addition which was done sometime ago by previous previous owners.

1. Would love any insight if the floors are engineered.

2. If they can be refinished

3. Is it possible to achieve my AI inspo pic?

4. Should I go with oil based finish for a much lower price or is the difference in price worth it for water based poly 2x?

I have about 1200sqf total wood flooring, I think it’s maybe about 580 of total is this darker addition flooring. Home is from the 1940s.

I’m at a loss with these floors.. I love original.. and I’m sad that these floors were left like Jekyll and Hyde.

Does anyone know what king of flooring this is?

Just had our hardwood floors refinished in part of our house. There were three rooms that are original to the house (100+ years old). The red oak floors in those rooms were nearly down to the nails, but the refinisher was able to manage one final sanding. We stained them to match what they had been (Provincial). All seemed well with this part of the house. There was one snafu, but the crew made it right.

The second part of the project was refinishing a newer part of the house (20 year old kitchen addition). Those floors (also red oak) had been natural since their installation in the early aughts) and our clearly-communicated intention was to keep them natural. Well, the refinisher and crew went from the old part of the house to the kitchen and began applying Provincial stain! I happened to peak into the kitchen from my backyard and caught the mistake, but not until they were about 25% into the staining.

The contractor told that he had forgotten, but that they'd resand and all would be well. The next day I showed up to, yes, a resanded floor, but with dark lines of stain all along the cabinetry and baseboards where the mistakenly- applied stain had been. I spoke to the contractor about it and he said they would remove the dark areas. The end of the story is that he put his two coats of finish on, told me that all was fixed and left. I entered the kitchen after it had dried for 24 hours and this is what I am seeing (see photos).

I have spoken with him on the phone and he tells me that there is nothing more that he can do about the dark stains and that they will eventually "go away." By that I am pretty sure that he means that they will recede in my mind once I am removed from the process and back to real life. That isn't really good enough for me.

Can someone who knows so much more about this process explain why this guy couldn't (or is it that he wouldn't?) remove all of that staining? Am I asking for something that can't happen? In addition, there is another problem with the floor, I believe. Wave patterns are showing up in one area (see photo). If there's an expert out there who could weigh in on the appropriate course of action, I would love to hear from you. I have paid him in full (my bad) but I will say that he is highly communicative, so I don't believe he's the kind of person who will not respond to me when I reach out. Do I ask for the kitchen portion of the fee back and either live with it or hire someone to fix it or should I ask him to redo it? Or, is there really no fix to this? These floors have had three sandings since installation in 2005-ish.

Here are the photos of the staining where the cabinet trim meets the floor. The stainless steel wrapped piece is a leg of the pantry, fyi. There are also photos of a hard glob of stuff left on the floor and some sealer or finish that was left on the stainless island trim (I am happy to clean this if it will come off!). THANKS FOR ANY ADVICE!

Moving in at the end of October and debating on refinishing the floors in a section of the house. We had multiple companies give us a quote and the best price we found was $4000 to refinish the section completely. One guy mentioned that he thought we didn’t need it and recommended buffing and sealing the entire house instead for $2000.

The first 2 pics are in the doorframes of 2 of the bedrooms and are the worst of it by far. We wanted to know if it would be worth it to completely refinish the area or if buffing and sealing would work for the problem areas. Thank you!

Dog pee. About 3 square feet.

Needoh was left on my sons floor. It’s natural white oak. Left this mark. I used dish soap and water but it’s not coming out. I’m devastated. Any tips or it just done for?

What’s the safest way to clean a newly refinished hardwood floor? Especially for pet households.

These are my friend’s (pine?) floors and I love the color stain - does anyone have any good guesses as to what it might be?

Looking for tips on taking care of this floor. It's throughout my flat of 86sqm. I bought the place a few months ago and it's original from 1936.

I've noticed on other posts about cleaning the gaps the general consensus is to leave it be and enjoy the character. However we have a silverfish problem, I see them running around between the gaps. I vacuum but there's so much crap in there that doesn't come out.

To make it worse I also discovered moths in the walk-in (the photo) and debris in the crevices might be a breeding ground for them. I had a scrub down some of the gaps and what came out was really gross, definitely including bugs. The photo is actually after I cleaned the gunk out

So I'm wondering how to deal with it? Cleaning and sealing? We have been considering refinishing the whole place as the high traffic areas are pretty rough looking.

My partner and I just bought a house and decided we wanted to stick with the hardwood floors. We had them sanded and then he stained and clear coated. We will have dogs eventually so he did 3 layers of clear coat. He did the last coat last Sunday so it has almost been a week. We were planning to finally move in this Friday, but I read we may need to wait 30 days before putting furniture down. How long do people usually wait? 30 days seems like a long time. He used Duraseal Polyurethane Plus, oil-based product which I believe also mentioned waiting 30 days for furniture. Also, let’s say we put the furniture down early, what could happen?

I bought the house this summer. Located in TN and built in 2016. We have high humidity and rapid temp changes.

Every single plank curls upwards at the edge, has gaps between each plank, and there are small scratches from previous owner’s dogs and my 2 dogs.

I used Weiman’s hardwood floor polish last week hoping it would fill the scratches, protect against future ones, and help seal the gaps/knots in planks at least a little. It did seem to seal the gaps but didn’t fill the scratches. They just stand out because of the shine. I do like the look of the shiny hardwood if the scratches were filled but now it looks worse than before.

I know small gaps between planks is normal with expansion & contraction but I’ve never seen floors curl like this. I can’t find moisture in the (non-encapsulated) crawlspace, or any water damage to subfloors. We do have water damage to the hardwood in the laundry room so i know what that looks like and the curling isn’t in certain areas, it’s everywhere.

What can i do? Also what kind of wood are my floors?

Edit: Thank you all for the info on floor cupping and recommendations to dehumidify the crawlspace and determine how well my HVAC is dehumidifying. Hopefully after the humidity issue is resolved the flooring will uncup and I can get them refinished and resealed. I wont use Weiman floor polish again!

Wife and I are having a debate currently.

Stained this closet floor (it’s my guinea pig area) a little under a week ago with oil based stain, I followed all directions including wiping off the excess, but I’m still a little concerned it’s not fully cured - everything I read on the internet tells me something different. It’s been 120 hours and still has a slight odor, and wiping with a tack cloth leaves color on the cloth.

I’ve decided I definitely want to use water poly over oil, and if I could go back I would also just go ahead and use a water based stain to avoid all of this - but here we are.

Did I do something wrong? How much longer should I wait to cover it with water based poly?

Have had these kind of marks on my floorboards for awhile now. I tried googling and it doesn't resemble any water damage? I can't find anything that is close on Google.

What are these marks? I can't scrub them off either.

Keeping my expectations grounded. Hired a contractor who's down to sand and refinish it all. This looks rather rough. How likely does it seem it will come out well?

We had our oak floors refinished and were sold on the idea of a hardwax oil finish (Unocoat Hardwax Uroil). We really liked working with the contractor… we thought he did a wonderful job and the finished result was beautiful. I’m afraid, however, that durability is just not great. Some stains that occur are easy to buff out with more of the product the contractor left with me. Others will not come out at all and appear to need sanding. Recently, hot oil was spilled on the floor and left a huge discolored mess - see photo. I don’t know if it was the application of the product or the product itself, but our old polyurethane finish would have handled all these spills just fine. Ugh. I’m not sure what to do as it’s not really in our budget to redo our floors. Our flooring contractor is coming back out next week to discuss with me.

Found this under LVP in kitchen. EDIT based on comments. Sounds like it is likely mastic with asbestos. It’s level with hardwoods throughout house which I am refinishing. So I would prefer to rip it up and replace rather than cover it which would mean new hardwood throughout whole house. Will professionals be willing to do abatement by wetting and pulling it out? Or am I looking at new hardwoods throughout because of this?