Good morning forum!

I have used the knowledge from this forum over the years for many of my projects but never have had to ask any questions until now.

I purchased an old home a few months ago recently and have been refinishing some of the floors. I typically use an clarke sander and do the work myself but recently I hired a pro do handle my kitchen and livingroom because I wanted it done perfectly and the work (nails needing to be sunk and uneven boards) was more than I could handle.

I tried to insist that they use Bona Traffic HD as I love it and have always been very happy with the results. I also have dogs and like the way it holds up to scratches. Unfortunately they refused to use it even though I offered to purchase it and they ended up using DuraSeal and going very light with it due to supply issues a few months ago.

The floors came out beautifully but my dogs have scratched it up pretty badly which I knew would happen and should have been more persistent. The wood is old hemlock and is really aged and beautiful but I am not in a position to re-sand and start over.

Is it OK for me to clean them very thoroughly and then apply a few coats of Traffic HD over them? I did the work on a room next to my livingroom 2 weeks ago and the wood is exactly the same and sure enough the TrafficHD is holding up to my dogs but the DuraSeal is not. I don't want to make them worse but I am hoping to be able to at least stop the problem before it gets worse.

I don't know who to call about covering a Duraseal product with a Bona product to ask whether there will be an adhesion difficulty. The usual mechanics require a harder coat to be covered with a more flexible coating. You had better make a sample area to find out how compatible the two coatings are before you coat an entire floor. The worst case would be that the top coat will peel with stress. A light abrasion with 150 paper after cleaning, then a coat of Bona and let it dry thoughly.
Then use a sharp razor blade to "score" the to[ coat with cross hatching. Use some packing tape to cover the small area pressing it down well. The pull up sharply to see if any of the Bona cat sticks to the packing tape. This is a great adhesion test.

Thank you very much for the advice Pete.

There is a single step leading from one room to the other room that had Duraseal on it. I put cleaned the step and put a single layer of Traffic HD on it about 3 weeks ago to see how it would look over the Duraseal.

This morning I did the test you mentioned with the razor and tape and no Traffic HD transfered to the tape at all. I am hoping this means it will bond to the Duraseal.

Does anyone else have thoughts on this? I did find an old forum post from here where someone else did the same thing with Traffic HD over Duraseal.

Thanks!