Less than two years ago I was hired to install a hardwood floor in a clients 2nd home. Recently there was some water damage as the ice maker leaked and it wasn't dicovered for two weeks. I want to replace just the warped boards instead of the whole floor as we had leftover flooring and clear oil based poly used in the origianal instalation. Since the instalation the owners want to change the finish from gloss to satin. Since I will be staying at the place during the repair and the weather is to cold to open the windows I and the clients have decided to use a Water based clear Satin Poly.

My questions are can I replace the bad floor and just put water based clear satin on the new boards and then redo the whole floor in satin or do I need to seal the new boards with the oil based poly and then redo the whole floor with water based satin? If so how long do I wait between the oil based patch and the water based top coats?

I sure could use some advice. Thanks

waterbase direclty will not match the aged oil based..

oil base may not match exactly either.

generally speaking 7 days is ample time to wait to use oil over water or water over oil..
but reality, you can do it quicker usually.

many options

As stated, it'll be hard to match the darkened oil finish, and keep in mind that it will continue to amber with time. To get it perfect, you may need to sand and finish the whole room.

The patching plan should work. But doing satin on top of gloss may not work well. If you are going to try, be sure to buff the floor really well. I have had issues with the sheen shining through the satin finish when coating a gloss with satin. It looked like the floor was a mix of satin and gloss. I ended up buffing the floor again and doing a gloss finish the 2nd time.

Thanks for the input guys... I figured I would have to do the patch to macth and then let the old breathe for a few days before deciding whether sand ing the finish off is necessary or just buffing and doing the Satin finish. Thanks again.

in my experience oil based product can't be re top coated by waterbased products...sugggestion re sand the floor
and have it water based polyurathane coating thats the easiest way to go about the problem... than puting waterbase product over oil based products. to avoid future problem....(try bona kemi mega silkmatt finish.) (one coat of bona prime and two coats of bona mega).... dexavel

One thing about oil based varnish is that it does not dry very quickly, therefore it will take longer to complete a finishing project as opposed to water based, water based or other faster drying finishes.

Resand. You can't put water over uncured oil poly. Seen the end result of these jobs far too often to be comfortable doing it.