I recently pulled up our old carpeting in our dining room and sanded down the hardware floors to bare wood. I was pleasantly surprised that the floor looked really good. There were no visible stains on the floor and the wood grain was very consistent throughout the floor. I was really looking forward to getting a coat of stain on it to see how it was going to look.

After putting on a coat of stain, some stain spots have shown up. I'm wondering if they are pet urine stains. I think the previous owner of the house had a pet.
Obviously I'm very disappointed with the finish, but I 'm not sure what I should do from this point. I have one coat of stain on the floor, but haven't put the polyurethane on yet.

I went to a local paint store and was advised to try wood bleach on the stained floor to try to get the stains out. I'm not sure that will work with the stain on the floor. I'm thinking that it will just lighten the stain, but the discoloration will still be there.

Could I get the floor back down to bare wood by re-sanding? If I do this, could I than use the floor bleach? What about chemical stripping?

Thanks for your advice!

Chris

Chris let the carpet guys stick to carpet. You can't bleach the floor after its stained. Bleaching a floor is a waste of time to get rid of stains. Its only purpose was in the 80 as a precursor to staining white. If they were pet stains they would have showed up immediately after sanding. The only way to get rid of pet stains is to replace the boards. No offense but it sounds like user error. Have you ever stained a floor before? Could you describe your process for me??? We need to backtrack to figure out what happened.

i agree with pasquale. It sounds like you dropped spots of stain on the floor while using a brush or rag, stained the area. For example dipping in the can, pulling out, going 2-3 ft from can dripping stain, then applying it. While your applying it those spots you dropped penetrate and then you go to wipe them minutes later they will look darker.

if it was pet stain you would see it before/after sanding for sure.

fast pasquale thanks for the reply.

I have stained floors before with excellent results, but this problem has never shown up before in my limited experience in refinishing floors.

As far as the process I used, I rented a floor sander and took the floor down to bare wood. I used 100 grit sanding paper on my last sanding. Before I put the stain (minwax oil based) on, I wiped down the bare wood with paint thinner to remove any dust, etc. I applied the stain onto the wood, let it set 5 minutes, than wiped it off.

The floor looks great, except for the 6 or 7 small areas the show the spots.
I'm positive that the spots weren't showing on the bare wood, or if they were, they were so faint that I didn't see them. If I would have spotted them in the beginning, I would have tried to get the stains out before applying the stain.

I hope this helps!

Chris

Good House- I'm sure that it's not from dripped stain. I stained the floor in approx. 2' strips across the width of the floor. I always kept my can of stain in the area that I was staining, so that if I did drip some stain, it would be covered up shortly with a full coat of stain. My can was always in bare wood going in the direction I was staining, within a foot of the leading edge of stain.

The spots are irregular in size & shape, and are darker in color, but in about each spot, there is a small spot within the darker spot, that is the right density color of the floor. I guess it's almost like a dark ring, instead if a dark spot.

Thanks for the responses.....and keep thinking!

Chris

how large are the spots? is it a circular area large? or a smaller area like quarter sized? could be numerous things, could even be sweat, drips, even sweat marks from your knees.

worst case, you could remove the bad boards and sand them down to the floor

Exquisite Flooring- You may have hit the nail on the head with the sweaty knees. The marks don't show up until about half way down the floor. I was wearing shorts the night I stained the floor and I was sweating. I was using a foam pad for my knees, but I did go off of it sometimes. I put my knees over the spots on the floor, and they match up pretty darn close....WOW....as they say...you learn something new everyday!

Assumimg it's sweat stains, will they come out if I re-sand the floor? Do I have any other options?

Chris

The moisture in your sweat caused the wood grain to open more, allowing that spot to absorb more stain. If you resanded, you would be fine. When sanding and staining floors, one needs to ensure the wood does not get wet from sweat, drips, bare feet, etc. Wear knee pads when working on the floor ans a head band/sweat band if needed

well then thats is a fairly simple fix. You can try to blend those areas by sanding the affected sections and restaining. Dependant on your skill level you could just sand the portions of the boards, then restain them. But I am going to suggest that you sand and restain all of the boards (the whole board) by hand, use a 60 edger disk folded in 1/2 and sand out the stain, then a quick pass with 100 grit ( I even hand screen the area with the same grit as I buffed the floor with) then apply your stain and viola done.

There are other ways to do it, but I consider them trade secrets. However the way I have told you will be a fast easy fix for you.

might as well try it.. figue if it works great if not ...you were going to do a full resand anyways.. i would tape each board off first

Thanks for all your help. I feel a lot better re-doing the job knowing what went wrong the first time.

Chris