Stain on Hardwood Floor

[Adam Lane]

Hi there. There's a dark stain on the floor. Maybe the dye in the carpet leached onto the floor when the carpet got wet.

I was told it's not possible to just changeout the couple of strips of flooring that are stained. That the replacement pieces won't be color matched, and won't be flush with the rest of the floor.

But, rather, we have to remove the stain by sanding the ENTIRE floor until the stain is sanded away. And only be this means will the result be a floor which is color matched, and completely level.

To anyone out there that knows about floors, does that sound right to you? I realize it might be a little tricky to replace tounge and groove flooring. But is it really necessary to refinish the whole floor in cases like this??

[Oren]

Never heard of carpet dye staining wood flooring.

Even 2,000 sf of flooring may not be all tinted the same. It states this on the instructions. If pieces, left over and you have some of the same wood flooring...use it.

I'm not an expert, but a small section of T&G can be replaced!

Can you post a picture of the stain and size?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

No, but dog piss will stain

True, they will be lighter. They can be replaced though. The color will catch up in 10 years or so.

Wood changes color over time. Finishes yellow over time. Anything you do new will stand out. Depending on how objectionable that is to you determines what must be done. Refinishing the entire floor is going to give the best match, but if the stain goes deep you may still have to replace those boards.

[Cliff Hartle]

The boards can be replaced but the new boards will have to be sanded down to the level of the old boards. There is no way they can do this without also sanding the old finish around the area. If you just then refinish that area it will never match the rest of the floor.

So if the stain didn't penetrate too far you would just sand and refinish the entire floor. If its bad then you replace the boards and then still sand and refinish the whole floor.

[RicodJour]

Maybe yes, maybe no. Depends on several factors. One is your flooring refinisher's wish to sell you a larger job that has a better chance of looking like he didn't muck it up. Another might be the location of the stained section and how much it would stand out visually.

There are tricks to piecing in a floor, and it requires far more skill than sanding and refinishing. Your installer might not have a talented guy on hand and/or the final price might not be all that different from the entire refinishing job. If you have closets in the room that have the same flooring you can steal some pieces from where it won't be noticed. If the finish is a little different and it's an oil-based polyurethane (your main floor will have an amber tint) the pieces from the closet will yellow up from exposure to UV over time.

The thickness of the new wood is a non issue. You can deal with that before you install the new pieces. Running the back side through a thickness planer is a simple way to thin it down, but you can also use hand planes or even a belt sander. Better a little low than a little high.

NOFMA has some good articles on repairing finished floors - here's one:

R

[hallerb]

steal some matching wood from inside a closet etc where appearance wouldnt matter, and piece in place.

i would probably refinish the entire floor for best appearance

[Adam Lane]

Thanks, peoples. Y'all know your floors. All comments (and links) read and duly noted.

-Yea, it's possible it could have been dog urine that caused it. The stain wasn't noticed for quite a while though because, at the time, there was a carpet covering it.

-The stain actually is in a very prominent place in the living room. My take on the comments here is that refinishing the whole floor will result in the best final appearance. Incidentally, the stain is circular, about 5in diameter. The room is about 400sft (actually, the floor covers the living room and the dining room. The two rooms are conjoined, with only an archway between them (no door separating the rooms).

-I don't really know how deep the stain is. Too deep and I see the advise that I'll have to replace the boards AND refinish the whole floor. I'm supposing that's because there's a limit on how much you can sand away the floor before you're compromising it's integrity too much.

-By the way, there are no closets in the room, so no available donor pieces for a graft.

-Oren asked me to post a pic. But, as far as I know, you can't post pics here. At least I don't recall ever seeing any pics on Usenet/ Google Groups.

[hallerb]

nd links)

ou

i have been told its possible to bleach out stains on hardwoods but dont know the procedure

[cybercat]

Hydrogen peroxide on a double thickness of paper towels, saturated and laid on the spot. It is weird, it kind of lifts the stain out from under the finish on the wood. (We have a worn polyurethane type finish on our golden cherry stained floors.) Problem is, it is nearly impossible to control how much the floor is lightened. You don't wind up with a uniform color. I supposed you could if you were very meticulous and went slowly.

[cybercat]

Yep, that's a pee stain all right! Try the peroxide first, it cannot hurt if you intend to refinish the whole floor. We have a cat who was doing stealth pees on the rug in the dining room we never use. Peroxide on paper towels, applied soaking, will remove every trace of the black color. Problem is, it might make the floor *too* light.