I hope someone can help!!!

My husband and l decided to refinish our prefinished oak hardwood flooring, professionally. There was no stain on the original finish, it was just natural. Our floor guy took an entire day to sand the floors, he's says he went through 8 layers of finish to get to the wood. Day 2 he applied 2 coats of conditioner & the stain, which was dark like a walnut. Day 3, he had to re-sand areas of the floor as there was still remnants of varnish that the stain had obviously not taking too. NOTE: these areas were mainly along the edges of floors strips and walls approx 1/4 - 1/2 x 3" in size at the very most. He re-sanded those edges and the surrounding area as if he had used a hand sander and went up and down the area affected leaving large areas to be restainded approx. 4 x 6". He then re-applied stain to those areas and tried to convince us that the top coat would 'blend' the light & dark areas together. Applied 1st coat of top coat (satin finish). Day 4 did a scratch coat & reapplied the 2nd coat of top coat, again trying to convince us the the now apparent darker stain blotches would not be as noticable after he was done and that what we were looking at were knots in the wood. WRONG!!!! Even Stevie Wonder can see the blotches. Instead of having one even coat of stain, l know have LARGE polka dots all over the floor of my OPEN concept main floor home. My floors are only 6 years old and now look 80 years old and aged.

So here are the questions:

1. Can this be fixed?
2. If they can be fixed, what would that entail? How think/thin will my floors be after he's done resanding?
3. At what stage did he go wrong?


He's coming today to 'inspect' the results and to get paid (so he thinks).

Thanks for your help!
Desperate Housewife!

In cases like these, it helps to post good quality photos. We cannot see your floors from here and cannot "judge" the quality. In the meantime, respectfully and calmly tell your contractor your concerns. And that you need a little more time to verify if the floors were done as well as can be expected.

Now, most likely, the finish on your floors was originally an aluminum oxide, which is a difficult finish to remove and requires extra sanding. But it can be done successfully. And if the floors were originally 3/4" thick ( they probably were/are ), then I am confident you still have plenty of flooring left. I am also confident that the floors can be refinished again, if needed.

Good point to bring up Gary. With Al Oxide floors doesn't one need to start with a heavy grit?

Yes, most likely had Aluminum Oxide on it. There are papers available now to cut that stuff off the floor, be we have found that using a FINER grit first to scuff the surface allows the heavier paper to get a better bite and pull the finish off.
But the problem the OP has is not that, by reading between the lines, I imagine she has a maple floor, and a floor finisher way in over his head. Two coats of conditioner?? One coat is too many in most cases.
My advice, hire someone to take over this project and get it done right.

Okay guys let me answer your questions first:

1. the floors are 3/4"
2. they had that aluminum oxide. that's what casued him to take the entire day to sand them.
3. no the floors are not maple, they are oak. but l do agree that he is in over is head.
4. 2 coats of consitoner were used to avoid putting in 2 finishing coats, this was so that he could meet the move in date. We then gave him the extra day to put on an extra top coat, but the 2 consitioner coats were already down when the extension was given.

Update:
One of the contractors viewed the finished job and agreed that it's a disaster and needs to be redone. (I tried taking pictures last night but the light reflections don't really give you a true picture). Not only do we have large blotches of uneven stain, we have sanding lines throughout the floor from the hand sander and the large sander (not sure what's it's called). The hand sander marks are circular and the large sander marks go against the grain throughout the main floor. There are pools of top coat in areas with stuff trapped in between coats, 2 different top coats finishes, 95% looks like a matte and a small area looks like a satin. (we asked for satin), along the edges of most of the walls, the top coat is built up. During the staining process, he also managed to get stain on our marble thresholds throughout the main floor and as it stands, that's not coming not coming out. Let's remember this guy is a professional, has been doing this for years. He says he can fix this by resanding & reapplying everything, but he wants 5 days to do this and can't do it until after Christmas. Which means my husband would have to put all the furniture away and then pack it all up again in 3 weeks. Did l mention l have 3 young kids who haven't seen a Christmas decoration in the house yet and may not becasue of all this? I'm scared to let him touch it again. Even if l give him the 5 days to try again, he screws up the second attempt, l have no choice but to replace the floor. Which would be fine for me but he seems to feel l should be flipping the bill for those materials. Is that right???

Your thoughts?? And thanks for responding thus far.

Well, I still cannot comment on the refinish because I haven't seen photos of it. But regardless, the customer needs to be satisfied with the results, and it sounds as if those results are inferior. If you decide to let him redo the floor and he still messes it up, I see no reason to replace the floor. A 3/4" thick floor should be able to be refinished at least 3 times, and usually more. And you should not have supply new flooring or have it replaced. There would be one exception to this. If the flooring had deep bevels to begin with, and he sanded those out. That requires extra sanding which would reduce the thickness of the flooring by more than a normal refinish would. In this case, there is less life, and refinishes, left in the floor. But IMO, you should still not have to pay for materials.

But what to do? Usually, when a contractor messes up, common business practice says he should be allowed to make good his mistake, at his expense. However, if he has proven to the customer he is not competent to do the work, the customer should be able to cancel the contract and hire someone else. I would recommend you speak with him and inform him that you will allow him to get out of the contract and you will hire someone else. He will not get paid anything and refund to you any deposits or funds he has received. Then you hire someone else. If he refuses and insists he be allowed to redo the work, then you may have to let him. But inform him if you are not satisfied after his second attempt, you intend to sue him for damages beyond the cost of the job. This may motivate him to let you out of the contract.

As a contractor myself, I try not to judge others. And without seeing photos of the work, I will not assume his work is less than satisfactory. I hope this turns out OK in the end.

When you mentioned the two coats of "conditioner" i made the erroneous assumption that you had a maple floor. Conditioner is used in some cases to help make a stain more uniform on closed cell structure woods like maple and pine. I have never heard of a need for it on open grained woods like oak. And it is not used as a replacement for top coats of finish.
Anyway, 5 days is a bare minimum to re-finish a floor, we always ask our clients to expect 7 to 10 days in case of any intercoat drying issues.
You said there are sanding lines from the big machine, going across the grain? And in the same paragraph you mention he is a professional with years of experience? The two comments do not add up.
Please try again to send some clear pics to help with figuring out what is wrong.

Thanks for all your comments, but we have FINALLY resolved the issue.
He has agreed to tear out the floor and replace it. Being so close to Christmas and he can't do the job until the new year and he's not willing to guarantee that if he messes it up again, he'll replace the floor. So we have agreed to split some of the costs and get a new floor this weekend. And seeing he had already installed hardwood in my bedrooms already, l know that will work out fine.

Desperate Housewife temporarily turned happy!

Dear RH Desperate,

You dealt with honorable people.

This is a good story with a happy ending.

Okay folks, so it looks as though l spoke too soon.

So our 'honourable' contractor came back and finished the job as agreed. He left a hell of a mess that my husband and l were left to clean up, even though he said he would take of it. The supplier shipped the wrong nosing for our stairs, we ordered flush they shipped overlap, the contractor installed it saying it was better to have something there than nothing and that he would replace the right one when they shipped it. What he meant was let me install it so that l never have to come back. 3 weeks later, the replacement piece has come in and is sitting at the suppliers store waiting for our 'honourable' contractor to install. Mr. Honourable agreed to come this week, but avoided by calls to confirm. I have made countless efforts to contact both of them via text, phone & e-mail, and to no avail, have received NO responses. Did l mention the supplier & contractor are brothers? And that the supplier is a near by neighbour that our children go to school together with his and play with each other? Oh and get this, while putting our house back together, we noticed a bottle of alcohol was 'removed' from it's box. The bottle was a gift received just before the job began that we didn't have a chance to put away. I went to pick up the box of alcohol and the box was empty, l had left it on a shelf in my laundry room which is where they would access the garage when they were leaving, . The jerks left the box behind and took the bottle. Still think l dealt with honourbale people? I live in the Richmond Hill, Ontario (Canada) area, these guys are a local company. Anyone interested in knowing who they are so that they can avoid them, feel free to post your e-mail address and l'll send you a note directly.

Wow, that is REALLY close to home RH!. Our company is also located in Richmond Hill, and we supply a lot of material to the local contractors. Feel free to contact me by private message, and if I know the contractor that is causing you problems, I may be able to help resolve them for you.
BTW, for all you guys reading this thread, IT AINT US!!! Lol. I hate it when things like this happen because it smears the whole industry, not just some fly by night wannabe contractor.

Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone... just stating the events of my situation. Dennis, how can l send you a private message?

You can pm Dennis by selecting the pm button under his name



Keith

Thanks, l figured it out...

FYI...Dennis is right, it wasn't his company that has been less than honourable!