IF YOU WILL APPLY SOME BAYER 3 IN 1 SYSTEMIC CARE TO YOUR BRUGS THAT SHOULD DO THE TRICK. IVE HAD THE DARNDEST TIME WITH THE SAME PROBLEM. JUST BE SURE AND FOLLOW LABEL INSTRUCTIONS. LET ME KNOW HOW IT GOES. I HAVE ABOUT 15 TRUMPETS IN TUBS AND IN THE GROUND AND THE LITTLE BOOGERS HAVE BEEN KEEPING ME BUSY TRYING TO GET SHED OF THEM GOOD LUCK

chisue-"Heck, the whole nation is in a slump, and expected to continue to stagnate at best for another year. If you need to sell, you need to beat the slide. List at your lowest price and get on with it. If you don't need to sell now, be prepared to wait a year. There's a whole boatload of REO's that haven't been disposed of yet." I agree. Some of the largest banks in the country are sitting on a mountain of "phantom inventory" hidden from the eyes of analysts and investors, and distorting the market's landscape. I have a friend who recently sold a condo in Myrtle Beach. She listed it at $239 and it sold for $175k after 6 months on the market. She considers herself lucky. Another area I've been keeping an eye on are the commercial real estate markets. If you have to rent until you buy another place, this is something to keep in mind. No one wants to have to move out of a rental because your landlord was foreclosed on. Next economic crisis looms: Commercial real estate defaults Kevin G. Hall : McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON-Two years after fissures in the residential housing market gave way to a national collapse of home prices and sales, experts warn the next shoe to drop is the commercial real-estate market, bringing more woes to the battered economy. Thousands of commercial mortgages valued at hundreds of billions of dollars are approaching a renewal date. By some estimates, two out of every three will no longer meet the original loan conditions and won't be able to refinance. And with prices for commercial properties expected to plunge, a vicious cycle may unfold much as it has in the nation's housing market. This is significant, but small compared to the over $1.1 trillion losses ultimately expected on residential mortgage loans and securities. Commercial mortgage losses will be a significant problem for many mid-sized and small banks," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Economy.com. "In fact, most of the banking failures that occur in the next several years will be due to losses on commercial mortgage loans." Links that might be useful: Phantom Homes www.forbes.com/2009/07/02/housing-foreclosure- inventory-markets-economy-financial.html Next economic crisis looms: Commercial real estate defaults www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/v-print/story/67187.html U.S. housing misery poised to enter new phase www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvesting News/idUSTRE55P51I20090626?sp=true Global property slide may be long www.reuters.com/article/GlobalRealEstate09 /idUSTRE55O6IQ20090625

It's usually best to clean with a TSP kind of product before refinishing a wood substrate and then testing the surface to find out what you're dealing with first. If you're not sure call around and ask for advice or pay a few dollars for a consultation fee, if you think you can handle it yourself, In other words don't ask for a "Free Estimate" from a professional thinking you will be told how to do it. The pros don't work that way. Many "Chem" cleaners can make a problem worse if you're not familiar with the process and to be honest at this point I would strip the surface to a clean substrate and start over. Note; Lacquer is an unstable product with a"High Flash Point" and can also be absorbed through your skin and very flammable. The fumes are intense and could leave you with damage to your lungs without the proper precautions taken. Acetone will do the same thing but without the fumes, however there are still certain precautions that you need to know before playing around with this stuff. Even strippers precautions need to be followed. Do yourself a favor and hire a professional for this kind of job as most times it will cost less than half to half of buying new cabinets as the pro already has the knowledge and the equipment to do this kind of work and save you peace of mind. I have been in the refinishing business for nearly forty years and have completed hundreds of cabinets/ furniture pieces. How many jobs has a DIY done?

I just went through the same thing. But then I'm a rehabber and get my fixer uppers at foreclosure sales at half their final market value. Hand the contractor a copy of your photos, and then simply lock the contractor out of the house. Ignore any payment the contractor thinks they have coming. And start over. Document what's there. but it looks like you have plenty of pictures in hand in case the contractor has the gall to complain later formally or try to take credit for someone else's work. Moving on, the first thing you'll want to do is change your mindset to only contracting out a room or two at a time. If the contractor doesn't work out, there is less money involved. I've never seen a floor contractor who would or could show the work of his last job, especially with old rehab floor boards. I'm sure it is difficult since they often times got fired from their last job. It is true that a good contractor can take one look at your floor and assess it on sight. The problem is that you can't, and you can't tell a real contractor from a poser, and you can't believe anything that you are told by a poser. Next you'll need to assess a room of interest. You'll need to drum sand at 36 or 40 grit. A Home Depot $75/day drum sander will work fine. Always spread lowering the drum control over a 12" long rolling movement to prevent burning the floor, which is the term for a hard drum drop. An untrained millenial with that instruction could do it if you take away his cell phone for the day. You'll need the millenial for the day anyway to lift the sander. Subsequent sandings at higher grit numbers will follow. End with an orbital 12x18" sander finish buff at 100 grit starting with pencil marks on 5 separate occasions then twice with the 12x18" screen buff with use of a $1 carpenters pencil to scribble on every sq ft of sanded oak between every grit number. Any floor contractor could do it, but few will do it piecemeal. A 6" 60 grit disc on a Harbor Freight $130 Hercules Sander is used for edge sanding and to feather out any accidental drum drops which are simple to find after the first coat of stain is applied. Stay clear of professional edge sanders, which homeowners often times call the Tasmanian Devil. Stain and finish are applied wearing an FDA Approved air pressure mask fed by an air hose from a $500 HobbyAir machine plugged in outdoors. The proactive approach is more like feeling out the unstained floor with finger tips like Helen Keller or shining daylight or hallogen light on the bare sanded oak before staining to find any dips caused by hard drum drops. Using a flooring contractor, probably the best you could do would be an option to quit at $1 a sq/ft or two if the drum sanding doesn't yield accceptable results. If the floor gets too thin or the marks you wish to lose are too deep to sand out before making the floor too thin, then you have your answer, and you are ready for new wood. New wood doesn't cost much. I paid $3.20 sq/ft for the wood material plus self installation. Always pay more for longer boards in the mix. And your floor looks beat and pet or plant water stained half to death anyways. New red oak of dubious quality is widely available on Facebook for $1/sq ft in any sized quanity. You'd think you died and went to heaven if $1/sq ft new oak flooring in 2.5" width was installed in lieu of your existing flooring, moisture content, acclaimation time, and warpage aside...start really small. Dark stain like Minwax Jacobean, two or three coats, and a 15 minute wait time will cover almost anything in minimally acceptable fashion on really beat floors. Once you pull that thread in the sweater of rehab, the whole sweater often times unravels. Replacing wood flooring is not an all or nothing proposition. In one house with 1700 sq ft, I had 2 sq ft replaced in 4 different rooms, before final drum sanding. They can reweave in a repair for about $300 a spot and if the carpenter is good, you can't even tell. It is a refinish contractor who knows the good temp floor carpenters that do good spot repairs. In another house, I paid a demo contractor to remove all the existing boards and then nailed in 3286 sq ft of new red oak using a $160 floor cleat nailer from Harbor Freight, a $50 jig saw, and a $90 Porter Finish nailer from Harbor Freight, and a $160 air compressor from Harbor Freight, and a $110 10" framing saw from Home Depot. It took weekends for a couple of months. Cleats are about $10 a box at Harbor Freight. Any handyman with access to youtube videos can do the installation. The trick is hidden female-female join strips available over the counter from Lumber Liquidators for 50 cents /ft and special order nose pieces for $4/ft that have the 1/4 female grove for level drops like stairs. Works just like lego. Cleats only go in the male connection or tongue side. I hired an unsuspecting millenial handyman through Angi's List by asking for floor leveling and trained him using youtube videos to do the leveling, sanding, staining, and polyurethane paid one day at a time. Even that has to be limited to a room or two a day. Cost was less than half professional estimates and few flooring contractors will do anything without a contract for everything, and you never know which steps he can do well, and which he will fail at. In Chicago, a good flooring contractor has a cost of $1.5 sq ft., but they only like to work in the city limits. In Ohio, it's more like $10/sq ft for just the finish contractor even on simple unfinished new wood installation, which is what they all figure they are worth. You'd have to do a room complete yourself to qualify for project managing others, but then you'd be very capable for knowing when to fire someone. 90% of professional flooring installers fail at floor leveling or rather floor smoothing in older houses. After talking with the president of the NHWA, and the all of the most expensive flooring contractors in my area, it is obvious that I'm the most knowledgeable in leveling or smoothing out 20 year old big box Homes believed to have been built by the cheapest contractors in all the land. Don't allow removal of any wood strips or other underlayment pieces especially those glued or stapled in place under the existing flooring or you risk entering into the wonderland of the next level of skilled craftsman, the floor leveler who will offer to remove your floor boards to the rafters and install new underlayment plywood in lieu of leveling on top of your existing floor underlayment.