I just had my floors professionally sanded to remove the previous finish (stain + oil poly). When they were sanded down to their natural color, my contractor then put a handful of coats of water based poly, with no stain before it, so the natural color the wood remained (more or less).

But a few days after the job, I noticed a few round circle spots, about the size of my cat's water bowl (which is ceramic, but unglazed on the bottom). The round spots looked like very mild water stains, except of the three stains two were worse, and without a doubt all three are visible.

After seeing this I have become extremely dissapointed. My contractor told me to be careful about leaving cat food on the wood for extended periods of time and cat litter sand that may get kicked out of the box. I've been extremely dilligent. But I had no idea the floor would be this sensitive. Naturally I wouldn't leave those types of things on the floor unatended for long periods of time, but a slightly moist cat bowl never left a stain in my previous oil-based poly floor finish.

The problem got worse, I sprayed it with OrangeGlow (see, I am not a professional), thinking I could somehow get the stain out. I now have a huge dark spot where the orangeglow oilsoap has sunken in all around (i sprayed liberally). Some of it has evaporated and some I tried to soak up with paper towels. But its still way darker than the rest of the floor.

Needless to say I am extremely pissed after spending all this money. Do you think the water spots (or the spot from my cat's water bowl to be exact) and the orangeglow darkening can be sanded out and re-polied? And if water poly is so unprotective (or did he just apply it improperly), how long before I have more stains on my floor? Should I have the entire floors redone?

I am pretty freaked out about this and wanted on objective opinion before I contact my contractor.

The contractor should have told you that the floors are easily damaged for the first week while the finish cures. In fact, one cannot even lightly damp mop the floors for that time. It sounds as if the water from your cat's bowl is seeping through the bottom and damaging the finish. It's possible for the area to be repaired but it will not be an easy fix. Talk to your contractor.

Holy crap are you serious? He not only didn't tell me that but he even took a damp (but not soaking wet) mop to one of the floors that had been polly'd 3 days prior to show me how to wash it. He did mention something about the curing but the first time he mentioned it he said 7 days, the next time he said several weeks. But he mentioned curing only in the sense that color will change, not as a warning at all as to how to behave around the floor.

I am frothing at the mouth right now. Technically my wife points out that we're probably going to have an area rug over the floor (this is in the middle of the floor of the living room), but that makes no difference to me because maybe we'll change our mind and besides when we sell the place this could be a big issue.

I am absolutely livid. Psychologically I had put this entire project behind me. I work from home and the rennovation was badly effecting my focus, now to think I may have to endure more of it to fix this problem, it really pisses me off.

After thinking more about this I realized that this may not be a moisture problem at all. I moved my TV stand that is very heavy (plus the TV it was holding). Underneath its small 3" feet I noticed the floor was darker in the one small square shape of the foot that was once on top of it.

My cat's water bowl is ceramic and heavy as well. I am thinking now that all of these heavy objects were placed back on the floor within 12-24 hours of the floors having their last coat of water poly dried, sometimes even sooner, within 6 hours.

Is this the issue I am facing? And what can be done about it?

I still would find a better spot for kittys bowl, there is two diffrent things going on here I think. The big tv is heavy enough to leave an indentation and discolor the finish no way the bowl is heavy enough to cause any problem. Those ceramic type bowls really like to sweat which is going to leave a nasty little water mark no matter what kind of finish or how many coats or how many days you waited before putiing the bowl down. Thats my 2 cents.

Upon further thought I actually came to the same conclusion you did. The bowl had moisture on the bottom, no matter how impossible it seems on the face of it.

My contractor is coming back tomororw. The Orange Glow has started to dry up/evaporate and the dark stain it left is much lighter now than last night, but still has a ways to go before being gone. I think I'll still have the water spots in the end, so I hope the contractor can fix it.

Hopefully it didn't sink too deep and it can be sanded in that one spot and re-polly'd?