What have I done to my floor?

[aaronfude]

Hi,

I may have screwed something up in my first attempt to refinish a floor. It's just a small landing, so it's not that big a deal but I'm still upset and hoping to fix it. What I have so far can be seen here:

It is blotchy and even looks purple in some places. Also, I think the floor is now pretty uneven although it may have been that way before and I haven't noticed. I have reasonable experience refinishing furniture, but this was my first stint with a belt sander.

But I guess what I would like to have answered now is whether something is obvious from the picture. It almost looks to me that I didn't put enough poly on the floor and so a second coat might help. (Do you poly floors the same way to poly furniture: by dipping the brush and trying to make the coat as thin as possible?) Is anything else evident from the picture?

Thank you so much in advance,

Aaron Fude

[m Ransley]

Its pine, not realy worth finishing for most interior designs. You need more poly thats all, probably 4 coats, Read the can , usualy if it cured more than 6-12 hrs you need to sand, to recoat, after you build a finish do your final sanding with maybe 320g, dont use your belt sander anymore.

[nlbauers]

I would not recommend a single coat of poly for a floor. The products I have used needed at least three coats, so unless there is some reason unstated above, I would apply additional coats. If possible, sand lightly between coats to ensure that the next layer of poly adheres to the previous. This can also produce a levelling effect with layers of poly filling in knicks/holes/unevenness. In the foreground of your picture it appears that there are sanding marks and scratches perpendicular to the wood grain. I would sand out those scratches as the poly will tend to make them show more rather than less. Yes,many thin coats with light sanding in between is better than fewer heavy coats.

[jtees4]

Minimum four coats.

[Frank Arthur]

[dadiOH]

When top coating, first coat soaks in. It soaks in more where the wood is soft than where it is hard. That's why it looks blotchy. It looks blue where the hardwood is because the finish didn't soak in much there and is shiny; being shiny, it is reflecting sky light which is blue.

Cure is to add 2-3 more coats following the directions on the can.

[James "Cubby" Culbertson]

You've put one coat of finish one it. Time for more. I hate poly for most things but I guess it makes sense for a floor. In any case, it just needs more finish. It looks like pine which will soak up the finish in the soft part of the boards more than the hard parts. I'd give it a light sanding and add another coat. Then repeat about 4 more times until it looks like you want it to. Cheers, cc

[Norminn]

The photo makes it hard to tell what finish is like, but in the foreground it looks like you took a deep bite across the grain with the sander? If there is truly a purple tint, and not a reflection, there may have been something in the grooves between the boards that dissolved into the wet poly. Or possibly an old glob of ink or something that came loose in the sanding and wasn't cleaned off?

Good floor for a newby. Unless you want to use paint remover to remove the purple, you just need to add finish coats as others have directed - varnish soaks in differently in different areas of clean wood, depending on hardness, just like furniture. I've never refinished floors, but have done lots of furniture. If you have more sanding to do, I believe an ?orbital sander might do better. Or even hand sanding with a block to keep it level. When you apply finish, brush with the grain, not across.