I recently hired a guy with a great reputation in my community to refinish our 1912 maple hardwoods on our main floor. For whatever reason he botched the job and I've got a long list of issues with the floors. When we showed him all the issues, he got really mad, said they were beautiful floors and we were being too picky. He's refused to do anything to address the issues.

Here's two pictures of the worst issue:

https://imgur.com/ClFfmLZ

https://imgur.com/6io3PRW

My questions are:

1. Do you think the work he did would make the floor fail and NWFA inspection? We are considering hiring an NWFA inspector to have a look at the floors, but the fees are expensive, and we don't want to throw good money after bad.

2. Can this be fixed without sanding down the entire floor again? Could I tape off and re-sand the poorly sanded boards, then screen and re-coat the entire floor? I've refinished floors before so I'm thinking of doing the repair myself. (The reason I didn't tackle these floors is because it's the most important part of the house and we decided to go with a "professional")



Thanks for your insights/help!

In your first picture the floor looks like it was sanded with 80 grit sandpaper on the final pass. The NWFA recommends sanding to 100 grit. The scratches from the final pass will not be filled smooth without at least two more coats of finish, if at all, in my opinion. The edger work near the fireplace is not smooth like it ought to be.
As far as passing an inspection, I think that it would fail, but I am not trained as an inspector.
The correct method to evaluate a wood floor is from the standing position looking straight down. The reflection that shows the poorly sanded surface in your photo would not be part of the sanding evaluation as you can not see the defects when you look down without the reflection.
Sanding a maple floor takes more finess than sanding an oak floor, the workmanship is not acceptable to me.
What is the problem with one of the boards of the fireplace frame? It looks like it is not fastened down. A good mechanic would have repaired this before sanding the floor. Was this evident when the floor was inspected before the estimate?

Thanks for your input Pete. I think you are right about it being only sanding to 80 grit. The finish does seem thin and rough compared to other satin oil-based finished in our home. Initially, one coat sealer, one coat finish was recommended. I think this was a red flag I ignored, but in any case, we asked for one coat sealer, 2 coats finish.

It's a shame that the edger work around the fireplace probably wouldn't affect the inspection much. That spot is a major focal point of the house that we walk past all the time day to day. There are other issues with the floor that are visible from above though (very rough edger swirl, picture framing from not taking enough wood off with the drum sander, etc.). Ironically, we probably would have accepted all the other issues if the fireplace section had been done well.

The board by the fireplace was mostly like that before the work started. Our house was built with the chimney in the centre of the home. As the house settled, the perimeter foundation ended up being about an inch lower than the chimney. So for reasons unknown to me that board shifted up with the tile/fireplace/chimney instead of the surrounding floor. We asked for the board to be left as it was rather than sanding a harsh angle into the board to make things line up. Maybe that was a bad choice on our part, it certainly looks worse than before, especially the flattened mitre joint.

We're still weighing the options, but it sounds like it would be best to just redo the whole job properly.