Hello,

We have bought a new prefinished red oak hardwood, and it has some holes in it, which are filled, but not all of them. We got a very good price for it, but in store we didn't see these holes...
I know there shouldn't be any holes, maybe knots, but definitely no holes. Did some sort of bug made those holes? What are these holes?
Is it possible to hide them? Since not all of them are covered and it is a pre-finished floor... If so, how?

What should I do? We're not planning to sell a house, but in the future, will it affect the value?

Thanks.

Here is some pictures.

Ya definitely bug holes, most likely from powder post beetles, dating back to the time the wood was still part of a tree. In some cases, eggs can remain dormant (and survive the kiln) and the little critters can emerge 2-3 years after the floor has been installed. Not likely the case here though, and easily treatable even if that were the case.
So, to answer your question, get some matching putty as close to the median colour of the floor, and fill them with this. "Colorite" comes to mind as a favorite of mine.

Thanks for reply, I will probably return it, since it has too many of these holes..

The smart money says it came from lumber liquidators. I have seen the same in their super cheap wood.

I bought it in Rona and it says the floor is made in USA. I bought everything packed and a few boxes were closed with scotch tape, so almost all wood in scotch tape was with holes. Then I decided to open normal packed box and to my surprise there was only a few with holes. I didn't open all boxes yet, but if it's like that I 'll just buy a few more boxes to substitute for bad ones...
I'm thinking somebody returned a few boxes full of bug holes from a floor job, basically they just selected good ones and returned bad ones.

Ya Dimitri, you have most likely got it exactly right. I would return all the taped boxes to be replaced with untampered cartons, at Rona's expense. We often get people trying to return the same sort of thing to our store, and have a policy of only accepting back boxes that have not been opened. Even so, people will try to just open up the ends of the carton to slide material out of the boxes and replace with discards without affecting the straps; but our warehouse staff can usually detect this and send the customer on his way ithout a credit slip.

Whats the criteria for manufacturers taking back bad wood....anything over 5% or is it 7%? Those should not even be in the box to begin with depending on the grade.

He said he got a good price on it....I'm surprised nobody has asked the obvious question...what grade is this wood advertised as? Those photos show wood that would be acceptable in a #2 common.

I think the key here is that the boxes that were taped rather than strapped were the ones in question. As the poster said, all of the pieces in the taped boxes were full of holes, while the properly strapped boxes only had what he considered a "few pieces". Therefore, it is my belief that even if he bought a "tavern grade" non-warranted product, he shouldn't have been given material that had all ready been selected out by a previous purchaser.
He is right that he should buy a few extras to allow for his own culling, but shouldn't have been sold culls from a previous purchase.

I went through all boxes today and some boxes didn't have bug holes at all, but those that had holes were no more than 25%... out of whole batch of unopended boxes ~1/3 had ~20-25% of wood with bug holes.
It's not bad actually, unopended batch in my case has only 10% of bad wood, everything else is fine.. so I'll just buy a few extra boxes to substitute for bad wood. I think its tavern or whatever!