I hired a contractor to sand, stain, and refinish my hardwood floors. He sanded them and then put a coat of stain on them. They have are very blotchy and they have black bands/ stripes throughout them.

does anyone know why this would happen? I wish I could add a picture.

sounds like you have chatter marks in the floor.

are the "bands or lines" approx 1 inch or so apart going form one side of the room to the other?

Here is a picture of the floors:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 4060_n.jpg

The contractor is totally resanding them down again today. Hopefully that will work

Contractor? Looks like a handyman job. Or maybe you're trying to get a wild distressed look?

I wish I was going for the wild exotic look. They looks horrible. He is a contractor who says he has done floors before?

Let's hope the redo of the sanding looks better.

That looks like a Douglas fir floor, which is softwood. I know from my experiences with Doug fir that it can sand up blotchy, and it's the best you can do. Those floors absorb old glues or mastics, or they show a "postage stamp" in the middle of the room where a rug might have been for 40 years.
You could sand with 16 grit on an edger, and those spotches are not coming out. I have pictures of softwood in my photo album, and I show people beforehand the different ways that those floors might end up looking. As long as they know, they're usually OK with it. I've never had one that looked as bad as this photo.

This is unacceptable, but it may be old mastic stains that aren't going to come up. I hope his re-sand is able to blast them out of there.

Wow thats ugly!!! Plus whats up with the stain on the base and door casing. I'd get my money back and fire the dude, get a real pro before he does more damage.

The floors are white oak. They looked great before I just wanted them a little darker. The contractor has been sanding all day. Lets hope that fixes the problem.

OMG..looks like it was sanded across the grain.

I guess they started off natural?

i will never for the life of me understand how jobs like this get done.

I mean he sanded and started applying stain.

at what point during this process did the brain shut down after saying this looks good?

continue and hope it gets better?

I picked up a job that had turned out just like this once.

I would fire him get my money back or sue him for it, and then hire a flooring pro to do it right. I don't know what he could have done to screw u your floors that bad.

I don't know either, if you're telling me it's white oak. It's a light stain, and then you've got these dark areas--and lots of them, in some kind of regular pattern, row after row.

Well, by now he's had a chance to go on Youtube, and maybe he learned enough to do a better job second time around.

Geez.They look like water damaged floors . I've only seen floors look that bad after carpet was taken up that had been repeatedly shampooed or soaked with excessive water.

I can't imagine anyone is bad enough to make a floor look like that . But if the blackness is in fact water damage , it would have been present in the wood and obvious before the guy you hired ever started sanding.

If you have a "before" picture , that might help.

So the poster is saying that there wasn't any water damage that was apparent to him. He's also saying that the floors were lighter before, so it wasn't like there was a dark stain that helped hide these dark patches.



I agree. I can't see the sanding or the staining causing an appearance like that--it was more likely something that was already in the floor. I'm curious as to whether it only showed up after finish was applied, or whether those dark spots were there when the floor was down to bare wood.

The poster stated they looked great to start with. I agree with James that it looks like they went across the grain.

Thanks for your help everyone. It turns out that guy had no idea what he was doing. We ended up throwing him out and finishing the job ourselves.
We think he did not sand the floors down enough so that the stain was not soaking into the floors.

Here are the before pictures:
https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos ... 0360_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 9033_n.jpg

Here is me and my boyfriends results. All we did was re-sand everything and then put 3 coats of poly on it. This was our first time doing it and we got a way better result then the guy I hired.

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos ... 0714_n.jpg

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos ... 9677_n.jpg