Ok so I had carpet over old hardwood floors in two rooms. I had a handyman rip up the carpet and refinish the wood floors for me. He used a belt sander for the bulk of the floors and an edger along the walls both with a 60 grit paper. He stained the floors with a mop like applicator the first time using minwax stain. It looked horrible. It looked so bad I told him don't bother coming back because I would have someone else fix it. He apologized profusely and begged me to give him a chance to fix it. So I did. He came back up and re-sanded everything. This time he had a square buff floor sander and the same kind of edger. He used a rag to apply the stain the second time. The middle of the floors look a thousand times better, but I couldn't go into the rooms to examine everything closely because they were still somewhat wet. I gave him a check because from what I could see it looked acceptable. Today I went in and it the edges look the same as they did the first time. I can not afford to pay someone else to do it now, and he has said he can't give me the money back. He has offered to come do it again, but I have zero faith in his ability at this point. There is not a top coat on it. Please let me know if there is anything I can do myself to fix this. I refinished the same type of floor in my living room on my own, however we did not use a stain on those floors just polyurethane.

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The handy man is using your floor to practice. Staining a floor is quite different than applying a "natural" finish. You can only go darker to mask the finish with another tinted coat of finish or paint it. Minwax polyshades may be your only hope. It would be very difficult to make this look right, but two coats may come as close as you can get.

Oh gosh, I feel your pain. Almost all the complaints I am brought in to "inspect" and are done super poorly are either from handyman or painters (or sometimes GC's) - almost of them are NOT floor sanders. They are amateurs and don't know how to sand properly nor to they have the correct machines.

I hate to tell you this, but you are going to need to pay someone to resand and refinish the floors. Pay a professional. And, if you can't afford it now, you'll have to wait to until you can afford it. Most likely, the handyman left all sorts of sanding marks and those will be challenging even for a professional to remove.

If the base wasn't sanded properly, nothing will adhere properly.

I suppose if you can't afford to pay someone, you can try to add some poly yourself, and then look to redo the whole thing in a year or two.

I agree, don't call that person back. If you do, you may end up having to replace your floors.

BTW, if the person is a handyman (and clearly one who isn't doing well), maybe he can help you for free on another easy handyman project -something the person specializes in.

Debbie Gartner
TheFlooringGirl.com

Staining a floors is not an easy task , you should hire a pro for doing it , theres so many things that you dont know that it will affect the final result , and remember your floor has a limited times to be refished ,if you pass that limit then you will have to replace the floors
Good luck