Hi all. I've had about 2200sqft. of Australian Spotted Gum installed and finished. Installer/Finisher is using all Bona products with Traffic finish.

Although overall the floors look very nice, there are some significant flaws that I see in the finish related to pooling of finish in areas, lap marks with "feelable" ridges, a couple of missed / dry spots on the second coat and some spots that are just rough - like the applicator was dragged through it after it started setting. In places it looks like the Traffic didn't level out well.

I also see some hairs and looks like pieces of filler etc. throughout (not terrible) - even though all air flow was off and the floor was vacumed and tacked several times.

The lap marks are in the center of a 30 ft. hall, and other defects are right where I will see them every day walking in the door, and the area of "dragging the applicator" is about 2 ft. wide.

I have attached pictures at
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0722.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0725.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0728.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0735.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0738.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0739.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0746.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0747.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0749.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0751.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0756.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0767.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0769.jpg
http://www.valacom.com/floors/dsc_0770.jpg

This guy has worked pretty hard to get the floors right and I think he's gone by the book on every step. But the finish seems to be challenging.

Please give me feedback on this and let me know how to approach it or if I am being to picky...

Thanks in advance.
Rob

Hi Rob,
The Floor really looks good. Nice Clarity, beautiful prep, etc.
There are a billion and one little things that could have led to his application chalenges. Those are exactly the reasons I don't use that brand. Extremely picky to work with.

I will brainstorm:

- Was the heat in house up too high? This brand is soooo finicky about the floor temp that the hairs in the floor are probably from your guy pulling his out ...joke ... Some guys keep these kinds of finishes in a sink full of cool water for an hour or two before use to slow the catalyst time, or dry time to allow a smoother app. and a bit more settling time.

-Was your guy working tired? Many of my mistakes come from just taking on too much work and this time of year is super crazy with holiday deadlines. Was he being pushed and working 12-14 hrs./day or 8-10?

-Air too dry. This time of year the air quality is much dryer and consequently speeds up dry time in nearly all H2O finishes. Some brands supply a retarder to add to the finish to increase dry time in dry climate areas or winter time use. Do you have a humidifier? off the subject but with that much imported wood you should think about it ...

-Because this product is also very expensive, and once it's mixed you HAVE to use it, your guy probably should have tossed what was starting to "gas-off" in the jug he was using and start a new one rather than use what was getting 'sticky'. Timing is EVERYTHING and noone wants to be halfway through a room or 30 foot hallway and realize they're nearly outa stuff so what happens is that a couple of jugs are mixed and one sits for nearly 45mins. to an hour while the other is being used. Leaving a guy with half the working time needed in the next jug to not have these kinds of issues .... Hope all that made sense, it was a bit scatterbrained ...

Ron, please know that although that is one of the most durable finishes out there, it is H*^#L to work with, and even more impossible to spot repair. (My opinion ... others may love it ... phsychos ...)

OPTIONS:
A) Live with it.
Maybe you and he can determine what percentage of flooring you are not satisfied with and he can offer you a fair refund from the balance of monies due. i.e. I'm un happy with approximately 100 square feet (5% of the job), therefore may I expect a 5% refund. Sounds a bit elementry but doable ... you and he decide the fairness ... just my crude example.

B) Allow him the time and opportunity he NEEDS to section off the floor and resand the portions that need redone. This of course is intrusive to your home, difficult for the guy to asses and perform (though not impossible), could lead to a few other issues that are not desireable such as a transition line beween previous and current, and because it's redo work he may not have the best attitude about it ... but that is HIS problem.

'B' is my preferred choice. Noone wants a floor with issues to be out there on thier resume, and if it isn't going to be a resume floor I shouldn't be doing it. So I assume he'd be eager to make it right, since that too speaks volumes when others call you for a refrence to his work. BUT PLEASE do him a great favor. Afford him the patience, time and opportunity for him to take his time and do this repair correctly. You sound like a very good customer. Your pictures reveal to me that you are not asking too much I'd be dissappointed too. And I'm sure if your guy is worth his salt he's saddend and dissappointed and wonderring how to make it right himself.

I didn't discuss the debris in the floor. You MAY find it to go away in time with wear. If not. surgery with a razor blade may be handy BUT BE CAREFUL. No wood floor finish job is absolutely 100% perfect and we in the biz are the WORST of our own critics (if we care enough). I hate to sound like that is an excuse but it's the truth.

I hope this helps and you both have success in your decisions.

William

Thanks for the response. We decided on B and the installer agreed with almost all of the issues on the floor. His solution was to do spot repairs and see if it would help. The day before the repairs he decided to do a complete recoat in order to prevent patch marks.

He did the prep and recoat yesterday when I was not here. I'm afraid that he did not sand some of the larger areas of dry marks and relied on a recoat to fill them in because the exact same marks are in the same place. Other places it is obvious that he removed the marks before the recoat.

A bigger problem now is that he sanded some areas of the floor, but not all areas. Where he sanded are very obvious swirls or spider webbing - you can see very obious swirl marks throughout 1/2 the floor now. No swirl marks where he did not sand. My wife almost cryed when we saw it last night.

So now 1/2 the floor has swirl marks, some of the old problems were fixed, some remain, and there are new areas with lap marks and a few new dry marks.

We've now had no furniture in the house for 30 + days and am concerned that this finish is to tricking for this installer to be successful with. If we keep getting the same or worst results each time, this does not seem to make sense. However we can't live with it the way it is.

Any recommendations on how to proceed?

Thanks.

I think the answer is obvious. If the finisher you hired is not capable of delivering the quality you desire, then you need another finisher. If it were me, I would call the original guy back one more time to discuss the floor and ask him how he feels about the way it looks and what he proposes to do about it. Hopefully, you have withheld some of the final payment so you can hire someone else. You need to impress upon the first finisher your dismay and that you need the work to be better than it is. Then you need to see what his response is. Swirl in the finish coat is from using too coarse of screen to buff the floors. I know how to fix your floors but I think you're better off finding someone local.

Gary is right on. I just want to add that I've seen spider webs also occur when there was grit debris loose on the floor. A little bit of un-noticed sand grit gets under the buffer screen while running and can do a similar defect.
Whether too coarse a screen or failure to vaccuum before sceening the cause is best diagnosed as IN A HURRY. Now this guy is rushing to redo work with other deadlines on his mind and he's rubbing salt in his own wounds.

I'm sorry you are going through this tough situation. If it can be budgetted, take Gary's advise. Shop for a referral based pro to come and diagnose and hopefully put a satisfactory conclusion to this. Unfortunately this is not a QUICK fix but it will be a permanent one. Make sure that your new guy gives a referrals, and possibly go see his work on a similar floor if you can. Time consuming I know, but hang in there, this will pay off.

Thank you for the replies!

I think your right on about this installer now being in a hurry. Before the last recoat he indicated that he was going to patch instead of a whole recoat because he only had to use 2 gallons of Traffic instead of 4. Then he changed his mind. I think he may be getting to the point where he's counting his minutes and pennies.

We do have enough withheld to probably cover the cost of somebody else finishing this off. Although patience is thin, we will get through the pain and time it will take to get it satisfactory.

We're about 30 minutes west of Orlando and I used a local guy out here. I'm thinking about finding some referals closer to Orlando where there are more upscale homes and the level of detail/experience may be at a higher level.

Thanks again for your replies.

You're welcome ... Say Hi to Mickey!

Well, here's the latest on this continuing project.
Furniture has been out of the house for 60+ days now.

First try at the Traffic finish resulted in lots of skip marks, lapmarks and pools along edges.

Second try - installer/finisher sanded out the skip marks, lap marks and pools and then sanded part of the floor. Result was that he either used to heavy a grit or had dirt in the sander which resulted in swirl marks all over the sanded areas, some skip marks/dry marks fixed, new ones created - same for lap marks and pools.

Third try - attempted to sand an buff down to where the swirl marks were. I think used 150, 180, 220, then maroon. Hand sanded around edges. Swirl marks were about 20% better, but new swirl marks in other areas, some dry marks fixed but an equal number of new ones - same for lap marks and pools around edges.

Original floor guy talked with Bona and recommends taking back down to wood and trying again with Traffic. I need to find out if he'll do some other type of finish.

Have had two other contractors look at it and recommend taking it back down to wood and applying an oil based poly or swedish finish. Both were not given any info on any other persons recommendations. They said have to take it down to wood to remove swirls and the oil based stuff will be easier to put on and in their opinion would look richer.

Talked to a third guy today that does mostly traffic and he recommended taking it back down to wood and applying tung oil.

Tired.

Any recommendations on finishes since Traffic does not seem to be working well on this job?

Thanks.

First of all I must say that WE (myself and I'm sure others on this board) are very impressed at the efforts of the contractor to make this right. I know It doesn't feel like it right now, but I still believe this is going to work out in the end based on the continued patience (awesome patience) of the customer (you) and determined efforts by your contractor. I need to tell you that there are more than enough stories about contractors who just don't care about issues like these and even go so far as to make you feel like you and your house are the problem, go on about demanding thier money and telling you to deal with it. I applaud the effort on both sides.

Now, that being said, re-sand and go for the oil based finish. I strongly recommend Fabulon or Synteko, OMU and I do like tung oil as well. I prefer the Waterlox tung oil brand with thier recommended 4 coats (2 - sealer, 2 - satin finish). I recommend 3 coats applied with 10" padco applicators (flat, not round t-bar) for the Fabulon OMU and have found that 2 coats of the Synteko to be pretty convincing. Lambswool for the tung oil is recommended by manufacturer but I prefer to 'snowplow' it with a Padco or Sure-line applicator as well (less messy). I do agree that OMU/tungoil will be a "richer" finish however the H2O will indeed be more scratch resistant. BUT if you follow the recommendations found here on this site and take good care of your floor , the hardness factor may not be all that big a deal.

If this guy is truly willing to resand this floor and complete the job in OMU or tung oil, my hats off to the man. I hate to suggest this with all you have been through already, but maybe try to see your way to helping him with the added expense of the finish products in this deal. For a job this size he's going to be out at least one more week for lost production and about $450 for OMU or $600+ for tung oil. I know that shouldn't be your problem, but I would like to again point out how truly remarkable it is for this fella to be trying like he is to make it right.

Good Luck!