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.

Preparation... This is the first I have done so I probably went over board a bit, but I am OK with it and will be able to eliminate a step or two on the remaining floors and stairway. A good set of knee pads was key to some comfort. :-) I wouldn't do this without them. 1. Used a palm sander to knock off built up carpet pad stain/remnants. 2. Used denatured alcohol and steel wool to remove old finish. Actually made 3 passes over the floor this way. Will only make two at most on the next floor, lesson learned. 3. Hand sanded entire floor to open up the wood. 4. Wiped on stain over the entire floor. Waited 24 hours, possibly should have waited longer but it worked. 5. Applied Waterlox sealer/finish Waited 24 hours - had fan set in window to remove fumes and was really required for the drying/curing process for next coat. Had fan running for all coats pointing out and creating cross draft over floor. 6. Applied another coat of sealer/finish Waited 24 hours. 7. Applied what I thought was going to be final coat of a Waterlox Satin finish. This didn't turn out exactly as I hoped as my old uneven floors posed a bit of challenge. I also made the mistake of overworking the finish in a couple of areas - lesson learned and Waterlox company warned of doing this. 8. Applied final coat. I spoke with Waterlox rep on this, I had two options, 1 was to sit it out and see if my streaks would go away with time(they said they probably would), second option was to re-coat. I chose to recoat and did so using a 50/50 mix of the sealer/finish and the satin finish. We love it. It has been about 36 hours now and it has a slight amber tint to it and is more better in appearance than we expected. We will do the 4 coats on the remaining floors as we did on this Living Room Floor.

I know this is an old thread but I felt the need to reply. We used Bona Traffic 5 years ago using spice brown stain followed by the Satin poly HD 2 part system. I remember back then it stated the darker color allow 12 hour dry time which we did. Then we applied two coats of finish. I recall that it took longer then 2 weeks to fully set and get solid but eventually it did and worked out great. Fast forward we got a new house. Great wood floors. Again we refinished them using the Bona HD traffic 2 part system in semi gloss. We used a lighter finish this time which stated on the stain can stated to allow 2-3 hours drying time in normal humidity. So this time around we followed the instructions and allowed 3 hours for the stain to dry on a lovely 75 degree sunny day. I did not go heavy on the stain and I would use a dry cloth to buff out the excess as I went along. Everything looked great. We have experience with the sanding so we spent roughly 10 hours using the different grits down to the 100 grit as the final step as instructed. Floors were lovely and down to the bare unadultured wood. We then vacuumed them and got every last bit of dust off using special footies as to not contaminate the floor with our feet. We could not have followed the instructions more perfectly. In fact we researched for a week and spoke to a floor refinishing company just to insure we did things 100% correctly. Well here we are now, 12 days in and I can scratch this off with my nail in many places. I am not talking just a scratch in the wood, but a peeling of the top coat scraping down to and exposing bare wood. I am sick to my stomach. The floor will not last. It is supposed to be strong like for a gym. This would not hold up to a room of infants. We luckily were finishing in a vacant home so nothing was placed on the floor for 10 days. It's not even worth moving all of our heavy furniture and starting over so I am going to put laminate floors over top of this and be done with it. I called Bona and they told me that they suggest 8 hour stain drying time. Well then why the heck would you state on your product 2-3 hours? Human error on my part? I think not I did everything that Bona said. Disgusted with the product. I should have used a cheaper oil base from the big box store. Biggest regret of my life. Perhaps Bona stored the product in a cold warehouse? Maybe it was a faulty batch with bad hardener? I have no idea but it behaves like something that did not have hardener. However I checked the unused bottle the next day and it was solidifying in the jug. Something failed and I can't understand what because I followed Bona instructions to a T.

Thanks, all. Contractor came out and he immediately agreed it needs buffing/screening and another coat of poly. He said 2 coats is standard but sometimes you have to do 3, especially when you have a lot of grain. He said the blotchyness is where the stain got soaked into the wood and did not stay on top. He agreed we should not feel it scratchy on our socks. He said the areas that appear to have debris in them are actually where the poly dried fast (likely in the sun) and then it was pulled back through with the applicator. He said that will smooth out with the buffing. I hope all of this sounds legit. So I guess it'll be another 24+ hours out of the house this week. But I'm glad he is addressing it. Helps that we still have a decent balance remaining. I'm not looking for perfection, because we are going to live on these floors and I know they are going to show it after awhile, but it's a lot of money and I'd just like to start from a good place with a proper finish. How else are my kids going to "risky business" across the floor when we go out of town? :-)