I am a novice but did a great deal of research and decided to go with waterbased polyurathane to maintain the natural color of the 60year old oak (varathane brand diamond). We applied 5 coats, each given the manufacturers 2 hours waiting period, buffed with steel wool between each coat except the last coat and still havent moved any furniture back on to it. Besides normal foot traffic there has been very little usage on the floor.It has been a week since the final coat has been applied, yesterday we tiled my bathroom, adjacent to the new wood finished floors. I made the mistake of placing the bucket of grout on the wood floor and aparently it dinged up the new finish pretty bad. I took a 0000 steel wool and tried to buff it out and it was more than just a surface mark. It looked like the bucket made tiny little chips out of the coating.

Now I'm worried that if a bucket which couldn't have been more than 30 pounds would do that to my new floor finish what would my dogs do to it in a short amount of time. I'm wondering if I need to put a better/stronger finish on.

Is there a way I can coat over the existing, new finish with something like gym seal or dura seal to ensure it does not sustain any further damage.

I am hoping for any advice here and I am desperate to get these floors protected sufficiently. I will keep scouring this site and the internet to gain more knowledge of where I go from here and any advice I do recieve from ya'll would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!!

Jleing

The finish shouldn't be cracking from a bucket, did you sand to bare wood, was the bucket wet or dirty, was it floor finish. You could screen and recoat the floor with a different finish but if the finish chipped up it sounds like an adhesion problem.

PS Do not use steel wool with water base finish you can end up with rust marks if any gets left behind.

Yes I sanded to wood. I shouldn't have used steel wool, now I know that. I didn't apply a sealer or filler before the top coat...is that something I should have done?

So now that I have decided to sand it back down and will be refinishing with bona traffic and was advised to seal it with amberseal or bona dri-faster. Is this necessary? What if I don't re-sand all the way to wood, because I may not have to. I just want to get down past the chipping layer.

I never heard of anyone using steel wool to buff between coats, but I ain't a finish guy either. Who told you to do that? Was this the varathane with aluminum oxide in it for floors? I know someone who uses that and it looks pretty decent if done correctly.

You know I'm not a finish guy either ,lol. But steel wool was used for years to buff in between coats of oil base. Then water base came out and they discovered the problem of possible rust in the finsh from tiny bits of steel wool maybe left on the floor,( like Mickey said). Here you thought I knew absolutely nothing about finishing.

Howard, I think you know more than your wanting to say about finishing. I think you just don't like to do it and are afraid people will want you to do it if your act smart enough.