So I decided to take on the task of refinishing the hardwood floors that were underneath carpet in my new and first house. I spent about 3 days sanding 4 bedrooms and a hallway. Before my last sanding with 100 grit, I had my brother working ahead of me to fill any holes (there were tons from the old tack strip) with wood putty that we made with sawdust and glue. I thought this would work great, we'd use the same sawdust to make the putty.

Well, it didn't. I got through staining the master bedroom and the spots where wood putty was put on are very noticeable and lighter in color. I've considered several options, and would just like to get any input from experts or someone who may have done the same thing.

1.) Leave it and live with it (which is pretty much unacceptable for me since I decided to take on this project, and don't plan on ever refinishing them again so I want to do it right).

2.) Resand the spots with a hand sander and reapply stain. My only worry here is that there might be a noticeable dip in the floor after I poly and/or the stain might not look the same as that around it.

3.) Try to remove the wood putty...any good suggestions on how this could be done.

4.) Completely resand every room, which is my last option because we are looking to move in in 2 weekends and I can really only work on the weekends.

5.) Any other suggestions you may have.

I'd really appreciate any feedback anyone has and suggestions.

if it is all nail holes then you can drill out the old puttymaking the hole just a tad bigger and find some color putty to match the floor. time consuming but so is resanding and finishing. If its corners and joints you filled then its probally going to need to be removed, refilled and resanded with a STAINABLE wood filler.

Thanks for your reply. You are correct, gaps and other areas were filled. It looks like I'm going to resand, sigh. From what Ive read, there really is no good stainable wood filler. Sounds like it does stain, but rarely the same color.

I'm not a sand guy, so sand guys shoot me down if this is rediculous.
Seems to me if you re-sand, your still going to have the non-stainable filler in the holes and seams. Even if you go with a colored filler, you still have to dig everything out. O.K, here's where I get shot down I wonder if it's easier and possible to color the existing filler with something like ink or paint ? Then apply another coat of finish? Just tough to swallow that the floor has to be re-sanded.

Thanks for the input. Really the problem is 1000 times worse because I just went over the putty before my finish sand and it did nothing to get rid of the excess putty surrounding the holes. So there are blotchy spots everywhere where the excess putty is. I hand sanded a few spots down to restain and see how it would look and it looked way better, no more blotchiness! So since there were so many spots, I'm currently halfway done with the first cut of my resand. Just taking a break right now!