Our flooring contractor just finished installing our new white oak hard wood floor and we noticed that the entire floor (1200 Sq. Ft or so) has prominent raised grain after the last finish coat was applied a day ago.

We were expecting the finish coat to seal the wood entirely and act as a protective layer against any friction or contact. Some of the planks with a lot of grain feels like a rash of tiny blisters or goose pimples broke out. We are worried that the raised grain will cause uneven wear and limit the life of the finish.

The wood we selected was raw quarter sawn white oak two and a quarter inch planks and the contractor used Bonaseal and Bona Mega Clear HD to finish the floor. No stain was used.

The crew spent a few days sanding the floor and the floor was super smooth before the seal coat was applied. We understand that the seal coat would raise the grain but expected the floor to be buffed and smoothed out after the first finish coat dried. There was a total of 2 finish coats applied.

We found (caught?) the contractor and his staff member at our property (we haven't moved in yet) on Sunday trying to check out the floor which was finished a day earlier. The fact that he would come by on a Sunday raised our antenna.

We asked him about the raised grain and he said that this was normal with water based finishes and that raised grain was acceptable by professional wood floor installer guidelines (he quoted some professional trade organization name I don't recall). He acted quite defensive and went on to imply that we were not being reasonable.

We would appreciate advice on what is the acceptable amount of raised grain on a new white oak floor finished with water based finishes like Bona products. Any suggestions on how to rectify this situation would be really appreciated. Thank you in advance!

If you are not happy tell the contractor why. If your expect it to be smooth with no grain raise, tell him that is what you want. If your talking a few boards here and there its one thing but the whole floor it is another. A buff and additional coat would smooth things out real easy,. I wouldn't expect this done for free unless it's rough over the whole floor. It sounds like you already have "issues" with your flooring guy if he starts quoting off standards. If he was actually trained by said organizations he wouldn't be trying to cover his arse. He would have known what to do to prevent grain raise and how to deal with it if he did. I am surprised a quartered floor has much grain raise at all, those floors are cut to limit the amount of open grain (which is normally where the problem with grain raise is most predominate ).

Thank you for your reply. The entire floor has raised grain but the intensity of grain varies according to the wood itself. Some planks are heavily grained so they is more noticeable but the problem is consistent over the entire 1200 Sq. Feet. Is there such a thing as acceptable raised grain as mentioned by the contractor who did our floor? Our impression is he is not interested in resolving the problem as he cites standards and gets agitated when we point out issues with the floor. We really hope the floor as it stands now is within acceptable standards as we wish to avoid further confrontation but we have doubts. Thanks.

Id be willing to bet that he just is scared that you would want it done at his expense. If you want the floor to be smooth thats not a unreasonable request. Id be surprised if you told him you would pay for an additional coat that he would baulk. If he does call someone else, top coating a floor is pretty routine job for floor finishers, it's a 1/2 day job at most.

Thanks for your reply. I've taken some pix of the floor to show the problem in question. It was hard to take decent pix but I hope you can see the grain coming through the flatter areas of the finish causing irregular reflections of the light. All raised grain areas can easily be felt by hand and foot. These are not the worst areas or the best - I simply took pix where natural light was reflected on the floor.

Hi, can anyone give me their opinion on the pix and what the best fix would be? Thank you!

the flicker link is giving me a "image not available" message.