Hi, I am redoing the hardwood floors in my house and have run into a problem with my finish. When it comes to refinishing floors I am an amateur though I researched this topic to death before I decided to go ahead with it.

Anyway, the floors are red oak and they were sanded down properly with a drum sander, edger, then screened to blend. I cleaned up thoroughly then water-popped, let it dry overnight and came back the next day to stain (oil - dark walnut). Cleaned the floors one last time and started to stain with one person using a lambswool applicator to apply, set a timer to penetrate, then I rubbed in with a wet rag and wiped off with dry.

Now, the consistency of the colour penetration is awesome and I really have no complaints with anything other than the overlap marks; when applying the stain we overlapped the leading edge by about a foot and not only that, but our overlap marks run across the grain instead of parallel with the boards! Though we applied the stain WITH the grain we did not think to apply it parallel to the boards so we are left with obvious overlap marks running the width of the room. I hope that I`ve explained the problem adequately... To make matters worse, I have about one week before these floors have to be done. We just bought this house and are on a deadline.

In conclusion, I guess my question is what can I do to minimize the overlap marks? I think it is too late for me to lay another coat of stain (running out of time) and I am worried about a checkerboard look if I do (overlap marks running the length and width). The stain is dry and I was going to start applying the poly (Fabulon) tomorrow. Would it help if I added some stain to the poly on first application? Would that blend it a little?

Thanks in advance for any input.

This statement is confusing and contradictory: "we applied the stain WITH the grain we did not think to apply it parallel to the boards." The grain naturally runs parallel to the boards and that's the way the stain should be applied. Any overlap marks would be less noticable running parallel. If you have perpendicular streaks, you may not be able to fix it. You can try carefully rubbing the overlap marks with a rag, wet with mineral spirits, to see if any of the excess stain can be removed. They try wiping some stain parallel to the boards to see if you can blend together the problem areas.

Sorry for the confusion, it's difficult to describe. We did apply the stain with the grain of course but we applied it across the width of the room instead of the length... there are no perpendicular streaks of stain, I wiped off with the grain every time. I found a picture to describe better.

THIS is exactly how we applied it:


Therefore, our overlap marks run across the boards instead of parallel to them. Does that make sense now? I will take your advise and use the mineral spirits to try and dampen the effect that I'm seeing. Thank you for the response

~Mark

Well there's your problem. You should have gone across the whole room doing maybe 12-15 rows at a time. As rschissler says all you can do is try to blend it in but the lap marks will probably still be there. Every on thinks they can do it but there is a lot more to making a floor look good then most people think. I watch a lot of medical shows but would probably mess up my first one or two brain surgeries, LOL.

All the way down the rows. Then turn and go back the way you came.

All while planning for your exit.