Hello all,
Our whole 1st floor is white oak (built in late 1940's) We are in the middle of redoing our kitchen. We had white oak put in to match the dining room. (It was cut in to look like it was always one floor and not a new install). With 3 coats of poly down, we have problems and I want to understand our options.

Background: In 2000 I refinished the floors myself using Bona traffic. I used the lightest stain possible.

I told this to the floor guys. They sanded the dining room and kitchen and only clear coated the floor. Here are the issues:

1. The dinning room still has that amber look, but is lighter than before. It no longer matches the living room which is darker. The floor guy wants us to just redo the living room and hall to match the new color. However, this leads to issue 2 and 3.

2. Oddly there are sections near 2 of the dinning room walls that are miscolored. Near one wall the color there is a 2'x6' section that the finish is even lighter- almost bleaches out (Reminds me of the look after an area rug covered a section for many many years.). The other wall is similar - lighter, but more blotchy looking.

And lastly
3. The kitchen came out brown- gorgeous, but markedly different coloring. No Amber coloring at all. It looks goofy because they did the cut in to the old floors so some boards in the dining room look brown, while others look amber.

We are going to meet with the contractor and floor guy about what to do next. They were floating the idea of adding more poly with tint. I'm afraid this solution will be a temporary fix- that as the new poly wears it'll look bad in the high traffic area ( especially with 2 dogs).
Is there any good remedy short of sanding them down and starting over?

Hello so we had an prefinished hardwood floor in our big living room and we decided to sand it down and just go natural with 3 coats of poly. The contractor sanded the whole floor with rough paper , then sanded it with fine paper and then buffed it . He then put one coat of poly on it and we decided to wait to do the other two coats till we figured out when we could get out of the house for two days cause of the fumes. Problem is since then my kids have been getting multiple splinters , my question: is this happening because there is only one coat of poly and will go away when we finish the other two coats of poly or is this an improper sanding job? ?.. please help I don’t want to cover the floor with more poly if going to still have problems... he is coming to finish tomorrow.. any help greatly appreciated!

The second and third coats of finish will help make the floor smoother.. Each coat of finish needs to have the floor buffed with sanding screens. The first coat will be the roughest after the first coat of finish is applied, because of the grain raise from bare wood.