Pallman is fine. There are two things I would change: Humidity - it is at the lower end of acceptable. Even though 35% is allowed, it is still going to show some problems with splitting and checking. Please get it up to 45% - 50%. That will really, really, really help the wood look health and beautiful. This should be done SLOWLY. About 5% increase every 7 days or so. Ditch the Minwax. It is low-end DIY stuff. If Pallmant makes stains, then get them to work with Pallman stains. Get them to redo the colour patches for you to decide on your colour...again going with a coat of finish over the stain patch so that you can see the depth of colour. That's it. They are stepping up and fixing a finish that was really rough. They buffed three times (I'm assuming the buffing was between every coat) and yet they still came up with a rough finish. So they are doing it over. Very nice. You have an stand-up group of guys there. If they won't switch out the Minwax - it probably isn't a huge deal. Many refinishers like to work with Minwax because the stains have remained the same for DECADES. I'm not a fan, but oil based stains work with oil based finishes all the time. The HUMIDITY is going to be your challenge as a homeowner. If you can bump it up to 45%, you will have a much happier floor. Much, much happier floor.

Quick question. As you know, we had our floors re-stained about 6 or 7 weeks ago, they stained and did one finish coat, and then came back once the project was done to buff out any imperfections and put the final coats on. They say to wait 30 days before you put down any area rugs...I know part of this is to protect their business, but if it was just the clear coats is that still applicable? I can't go an entire month with our dogs and no rugs, and we want to move back in!! How imperative is this, the rugs will always be in the same spots with our floorpan layout, so if it affects coloring it won't matter really....thoughts?

PF offered to come buff and put another coat, but we objected it since all 4 coats were put within 6.5 hours and we are not sure that previous coats are good. PF also offered to do full refinish but we don't have confidence that PF can do a good job this time. PF himself does not guarantee that second time the finish will work because as he says we do not have perfect humidity conditions. PF says all his employees are certified and did everything within the Bona's guideline. I don't know how 4 coats in 6.5 hours is within Bona's guideline but he is a type of a person that can claim that yogurt is black. The inspector made a mistake and told us that only one person was certified from PF. After we told PF that we talked to female inspector and she said that from our description it looks like PF was at fault, PF tracked down the inspector (we did not disclose inspector's name to PF), called her to correct her that all his employees are certified. In addition PF threatened the inspector to take her to NFWA ethics boards and told her how much money he makes a year and that she should be careful. PF told the inspector that she cannot work for us since he hired her once and that would be a conflict of interest since the inspector has a dislike for him. He is willing to pay $1400 for the damages and walk away if we sign NDA. I told him $1400 would not even cover our accommodation and moving and storage fees of our belongings that we are incurring because of him plus we have to sign a NDA that will free him from any future responsibly of his subfloor and floor install work. We contacted PF and told that it was wrong to track down the inspector and threaten her. PF denied that he threatened the inspector and only called her to correct that all his employees are certified. Also PF tried multiple times to convince us to hire an inspector of his choice for $500. We said we want an independent inspector. He says the inspector we found is a rip off as their fee is $2800.

You have choices. 1) You can do the floor natural color and use all water based products to eliminate residual odors. 2) You can use a reliable oil based stain that is formulated to use with water based finishes and perhaps have some residual odor. 3) You can use water based stain and when the application is predictably unacceptable, you can choose selections 1 or 2 above. Other than water based aniline dye applied at full strength, I've not seen an acceptable water based wood floor stain. Which one were you looking at to recommend to your contractor?