I have a flooring situation that is kind of weird (and also is totally my husbands fault, but at this point I suppose that's neither here nor there ) and I cant find an answer at all to my question, which is: when we first bought our home 18yrs ago, previous owners had cats who had peed all over the carpet, so we planned on replacing it, but when we ripped it up, urine had soaked thru the pad to wood and smelled horrible. W/o even thinking, my husband filled a pitcher w/hot water & dumped on the urine spots, which made the smell 10x worse. His solution? Since we were putting new carpet in anyway, he decided to roll a layer of KILZ primer over the wood...that, other than the pee smell, was in perfect shape. Fast forward 18yrs, that carpet is now destroyed by our kids/pets, but knowing what we knew - that underneath a primered wood floor, we decided to try 'faux wood' by using plywood - until literally this morning when, after having ripped out our carpet, hubs decides he thinks we can save a lot of money & just refinish the floors we have, but do we sand? Strip? There are pros/cons to each, which is stressful enough, but everyone explains what to do if you're removing varnish or paint, but nothing addresses what to do if you have a fine layer of oil based primer (why would they though ). Neither of us have ever done this before, clearly, and want to make sure we don't screw the whole thing up even worse, so I guess what I really need to know is, when refinishing wood floors, do the same rules that apply to varnish and/or paint also apply to just primer? For example, if we go the chemical route and use CitriStrip, would it do more damage since there is, technically, no paint there to strip, thus causing more damage to the wood...? Or if we decide to just rent a sander, are we good to sand just enough to apply new varnish, or should we go all the way and attempt to sand until it's back to bare wood? Am I making any sense at all, because I am so confused right now and I'm pretty sure even writing this is confusing me even more...help! Please, someone throw me a bone before my husband makes another rash decision & decides to just wing it! And did I mention that he's planning on doing one or the other tomorrow..? Help!

Call a professional wood floor refinisher for evaluation. Do not try it yourself!!