floor woes

There is this floor….

A week and a half ago we laid a simple 2 ¼” oak strip floor, pretty basic.

The plan was to have it laid by the end of last Monday and start the finishing process on Tuesday. Well that worked out, except when the finishers arrived Tuesday morning, we all looked at a very strange looking floor.

Something was wrong with the stain in how it was drying. It was all streaked and blotchy. It still seemed wet in areas, which is not normal. And the wet areas looked particularly very bad. Well we discussed it and all decided it just needed one more day to dry.

Wednesday. ...

It looks worse.

Thursday.

We meet on the job not sure what to expect but knowing something is very unusual with the wood, or the stain, or both.

We decide to sand off a test area back to bare wood. What we found was the stain actually started to seep up through the pores of the wood after sanding again, creating puddles of wet stain. We sanded that off again and it continued. 

My sanders and finishers who have thousands of square feet of finishing under their belts over many years were stumped. They or I have not seen this before. We called some experts in the field and they too were somewhat perplexed.

After a long discussion, we all decided it was time to start over, sand off the stain and re-try. We sanded it back down to bare wood and the stain was still seeping up all over.

We turned the heat up and waited….and waited…..and waited ….5 more days until yesterday when all these puddles of stain finally were dry.

We did one more light sand to remove the last of the stain and finally we had a dry floor again. Next before re-staining we decided to do a process called "water popping". This is where you spray a light coat of clean water over the surface of the wood and sponge it off. Then let dry. Normally oak does not need this. It is usually used to tame down grain of wood like pine and maple. "Water popping" helps to make the overall surface take the stain more uniformly. 

We now were ready to re-stain (with another product) in hopes it would turn out. As soon as the new stain was applied, we could tell the result was how it should be. A beautiful even looking stained wood floor. It appears that "popping" the floor helped!

We start with the finish coats (varnish) today.

What started as a 2-day floor finish job turned into an 8 day process. Just one of those un-expected things we need to deal with.

We are having the stain company look into what may have been wrong for future reference.

Just a week in the life of remodeling!

~ The Carpenter

the beautiful finished floor!