If you continue to hire people in the hardwood flooring business who have not kept pace with emerging technology in finishes...well, you will have many of the drying and 'softness' issues of the finish films that you are experiencing with your floors. As for poor sanding jobs and the overall lack of good workmanship...well, you can find that in any business that is subject to 'cutthroat' competition. For the best hardwood flooring job (either installation or restoration) you need to hire an independent contractor who actually performs the work or closely supervises it. He or she lives or dies in the business by the quality of the work, so the work quality usually is of high caliber. Going with a company that sends a salesperson to you to 'sell' the job and then sends a 'sub' or a 'jobber' to do the work,...well that, in my opinion is not the best way to go. Perhaps there are companies that work that way and get excellent results, but I haven't seen it. Flooring work is a skilled 'trade' or 'craft' and there are good tradespeople and good craftspeople in the business. Your job as consumers is to find them, insist on quality materials and then pay them what the work is worth!

OK I explain. It is a floating floor what we call in the UK engineered floor, so it is not solid throughout but a thickness of the wood mounted on a plywood base. It is a Malaysian wood, not so hard, so I suppose high heels could dent it perhaps, it is not the hardest. It is a click system not requiring glue, interesting. Now from Malaysia it says it has five factory coatings of which some contain aluminium oxide. It got worn out over the years. So a year ago I sanded the wood with the machines with the correct paper and vacuumed well. Then I applied one coat of Bona Traffic silk, you know the glossy one. I then noticed a number of parts were very coarse to the touch. So after some hours I sanded again with slightly finer paper but still coarse. Now I applied again Bona. Once again certain areas were coarse to the touch and you could see stains. So now I did a final very fine sanding but this was by hand with very fine paper particularly in the areas affected. It took me hours. Then I applied the third coat. I called the Bona representative who was at a loss!!! He gave me a bottle of Bona "refresh" it is a type of product to do another pass over. I applied it to the worse parts of the floor. Although one could see areas which were coarse to the touch and which did not look quite right the shine was sufficient to fool guests for Christmas. Now I am exactly one year on. In those area I mentioned there are now black marks. I attach some photos of the present situation with example of the black marks. (sorry I do not know how to create a new thread). I want to sand it and apply Bona again before New Year when my mother is visiting, my wife will just about tolerate me sanding on the 27th Dec. I had the suspicion it was the Bona product maybe the bottle I bought was old or had been exposed to low temperatures where I bought it from but the Bona representative told me it was very unlikely to be the case.

... and the saga continues. We didn't think it could get much worse, but alas, it did. If anyone is interested in how the story ends: Because we are living there (with our cat) he said that would go room by room and move furniture. We asked for a heads up on which rooms so we could move most of it and figure out where to hide our cat. He said he would start with the two bedrooms. One day he focused on the spare room and said he wanted us to let him know what we thought so he knew how to proceed with the others. Fair enough. We said there were buffer swirl scratches and a bunch of poly issues (puddles, lines, and a big globby mess). So he came yesterday and decided to focus on the master bedroom. He said he would redo the spare room's poly globs "later" but that the scratches would "take too much time." I said I would overlook the scratches if he tried not to do them on the rest of the floor. We left to take some calls at a coffee shop around 1pm. When we returned around 3pm we couldn't get into the apartment because he had decided to sand the whole place before finishing a room! We are confused and frustrated because we could have moved our stuff properly and wanted to be sure he could do a good job before taking more of our floor. We have to camp out at a restaurant with our laptops for the next three hours and try to do work. When we return before 6pm, he is gone for the day. We are careful not to touch the floor, but notice dozens of places with debris under the poly, long hairs under the poly, a big filler smear right in front of the door and -- get this -- an outline of our bed frame in poly because he never took it out! We are fuming and unable to reach the contractor. We finally text the floor guy that we are not comfortable proceeding and that he can pick up his stuff before we leave for work. He says it is not done, but extra poly isn't going to fix those issues and we can't risk him doing this to the rest of the floor. Now we're left with a half-finished floor and will NOT be letting that man into our apartment again. If anyone has any floor specialist recommendations in NYC, I'm all ears :-) P.S. Not looking for perfection.. just a good looking floor.

Agree with G&S. I've personally worked with many types of Loba and it is TEN TIMES easier to work with than Rubio. I like a satin finish rather than matte. Matte is hard to live with and yes, hazing is a big issue. Some of the best applications (when I sold flooring) was a homeowner DIY application using Loba. Once you learn some of the tricks, it is STUPID-EASY to work with. It works well with a low-nap paint roller. I've always said about Loba, "If you can paint a wall, you can use Loba." There are VERY FEW professional grade products out there that are as easy to work with as Loba. Bona is HELL. Rubio is SUPER PICKY (the SANDING must be METICULOUS or you will pull your hair out for WEEKS trying to get it "right"). Getting your hands on some of the other options can be a nightmare unto itself. I would take Loba 2K Supra AT in the satin in a heartbeat. Beautiful stuff with a lovely velvety feel to it with a low-gloss satin "glow" to it. Really stunning stuff. If you have white oak, remember to use Loba's EasyPrime in lieu of one coat of finish. The 2K Supra AT is SOOOOO tough that two coats over the EasyPrime = amazingly tough/beautiful finish.