I recently had my hardwood floors done in my 1920 home w/ oak floors. The guys sanded all of the floors, stained and applied 3 coats. They are perfect through out. I am going to assume that he applied 3 thin coats which give it a nice non-cloudy finish and you can see the incredible grain of the wood.
Here is where I went wrong... I Have another property built in 1937 that we plan to move into in the fall and sell the 1920s home at that time. I refinished the floors ,but didn`t use the guy that did my 1920s home, but had a friend do the floors. I brought him over to my 1920 house and showed him that i wanted the finish in he 1937 house to look just like the 1920s house. He agreed that since they were the same wood (he had sanded the 1937 house at the time so he knew what he was dealing with)

The end result is that he put the coats on so thick in the 1937 house that you couldn`t see the wood grain, some can be seen in certain areas, but for the most part it looks like a cloudy lamenant floor. In his mind he figured that he was doing me a favor with the "thicker is better" mentality.

If I were to correct this I would imagine that we would need to sand it all the way back down and start over.

..let me know what you guys think

Thick is one of the worst things you can do, unless the thickness was built up in many coats.

2 thick coats can be soft and scratch easy.

I wouldn't sa that it is incredibly thick..just thick enough so you are unable to see the majority of the wood grain.

He applied the poly in three coats using what appears to be poly that gos on thick.

One thing if you do go back down to bare wood use a gloss for the build coats and finish with the desired sheen this will make a crisper look than if he put on 3 coats of satin. Cloudy finish also can be caused by thick uncured undercoats trying to offgas underneth. If the coats were heavy and adeqaute dry time was not followed it's a possibility...

That is what I was thinking might have happened.

Did they use the same brand of finish with the same sheen? It sounds like they used different brands and or sheens of finish, resulting in the different appearances.

Correct me if I am wrong here but if you were to try and put a coat on top of a coat that is not dry would it not orange peel . Orange peel is what it looks like when the coat you are aplying starts to wrinkle . It happens right away dam near . Has always happend to me . I screen between coats so I just had a thought if a person were to not screen maybe the top would be hard enough to get away with it but I really have my doubts about that. I dont know what the weather was like at the time the finish was aplied but what it sounds like to me is that it was cold and the finish blushed ( turned sorta see through milky white ) not knowing the brand I can not say what to cold would be but it doesnt have to be frezzing for most urethanes to do this. It has happend to me and I live in California. In alot of cases you can screen the s..t out of the finish and then recoat and get away with it. They will be cutting alot of finish off the floor so make sure they do not try and rush the job if they get in a hurry and lean hard on the buffer they might get into alot of trouble . Scratces so deep they dont hide and more . Good luck to ya sorry bout your floor