You have to fix the spots before applying a second coat of sealer. Not all sealers allow multiple coatings. Which one are you using?

I am going through this and I’m getting my floors resanded/finished this weekend.

We applied Bona Nordic sealer with a roller and it was uneven, blotchy and had noticeable lap lines. Not to mention I could see the chatter marks from the sander once the sealer was applied.

Since we had to resand, we tried buffing and applying a second coat with a T bar to see if it would even out but it accentuated the lap lines.

No luck. We’re going to resand and apply the sealer with a Tbar.

Nordic with 2 coats; lap lines still appear.

Bona is NOTORIOUS for a SHORT working wet edge. The Traffic has a wet working edge of 2-4 minutes (yes....very short...you must move quickly). If the sealant is HARDER to work with than the finish, you will have to be VERY mindful of your time. You must work the T-bar very quickly (1-2 minuts max) to get back to the edge you just left alone. Very very quick.

This is why Bona Training is offered to professionals so that Bona products can be successfully applied (ie. complaints about Bona often turn out to be complaints about the professional).

I'm pretty good with Loba (10 minute working wet edge) but I would NEVER attempt Bona without proper training. My hats off to any amateur who can pull off a Bona sealant and finish that looks half decent.

Ive used nordic seal quite a bit and apply it with a roller. It takes a careful touch to get it even, especially on the first coat. Bona actually recommends applying Nordic via Tbar, their videos show the cut in guy pulling the turn arounds out. Which on their sample floor works great, not always practical in real life.

Suggestion would be to do small areas, tape off sections, and apply a liberal amount. Trying to extend maximum footage will cause more problems with color.

The second coat will give you more working time on the wet edge but not a whole lot. Key is speed.

Remove all your doors. Doors are obstacles that causes time and coating delays. Use a T-bar and "a helper to cut in after you". Pour a 4-6" wide line, keep dragging finish until you are complete. The biggest challenge will be backing out of a room - feather, feather, feather to prevent lap marks. Use a telescoping pole to help cut down on lap marks.

After first coat is dried, fix any imperfections. Most common areas will be where you backed out and doorways. Lightly scrape, hand sand and touch up. Then apply the second coat. A third if, desired.

I've tried the bona natural as well. Same problem . I ended up mixing 50/50 with Bona Mega and it stopped the streaking. I wouldn't buy Bona Sealer again even though it looks pretty.

I recommend using separates whenever possible for colorants. You will be able to control the outcome of the stain when applied separate from the finish. All-in-one finishes such as Nordicseal, NaturalSeal, Amber seal and poly shades will suspend pigments in the finish. The wood will absorb finish before pigments. Which leads to lap mark issues. HVAC systems will cause complications also. It creates hot spots in the floor during this time of year. Even with the HVAC off, it takes quite a bit of time for the floor to cool down. Having the floor temp at 60 and air temp at 70 degrees is an ideal condition for finish application.

I disagree. The first ingredient in the Bona mega and the Natural seal is the polymer. The finish. The finish alone does not stain or discolor the wood. It's the pigment in the Bona Seal. Being the polymer was main ingredient it's okay to mix the two on this product line but I would just stick to an oil based stain and then topcoat personally on my next job.

Bona has super short working wet edges. Like 2-5 minutes. Compare that to oil based (45 minutes) and you can see where streaks and lap marks come from.

The working wet edge on bona seal is seconds. Not minutes. The wet edge on bona topcoat is several minutes.

This thread is about the poor streaking on the Bona Seal product line. You guys keep referencing the Traffic Or Mega top coat. That's not the problematic product.

Hi All. I used Natural Seal on a pine wood floor and found it too white. As I’m looking to have a more farmhouse style floor, highlighting the grain and knots of the wood, can I put Intense Seal over Natural or do I have to re-sand it and start all over again? Here are some pictures of my floor with one coat of Natural Seal. Thanks for your advices!

Yes, you can apply intense over natural. both are building sealers. the only one you cannot is classic seal.

Thanks G&S for the quick reply! have a great day ;)

Hey!

I just put down bona amber seal on my new unfinished white pine floors. i was hoping to get more of a warm

amber tone but instead got a lot of yellow. can i try and neutralize it with natural seal on top? i know pine will amber naturally with time, does anyone know the time frame? im stuck on what to do for my next step.

here is the before and after - i want it warm without the yellow.

Yes, you can apply Natural seal over it. Amberseal is a building coat. You can apply multiple coats if, needed. It will not have much impact though. You're better off with Nordicseal at this point to give it a paler look.

hey G&S youve been so helpful in this thread maybe you can help us. Our floor person sanded, aplied nordicseal and then mega one. We had just purchased the house and were not at the house when work was done. we were going for light color - but there is all this splochyness. Floor guy tried to hand sand the spots and refinish but kept coming back. he said he thinks it is old oils coming up and advised we start over, with a new invoice, and go dark if we want to avoid. Any advice?

Yes, it is old oil base polyurethane that the contractor did not completely removed during their sanding. These are most likely low spots where the equipment could not get to. Since these blotches are everywhere throughout, edges and field. Have them redo the floor. They need to get the floor flatter to clean it all up.

we asked the guy about that, and he said there was no sign of this until the day after they put down megaone one. for example, this is a photo after nordicseal but before megaone. after he saw the end result, he hand sanded all the spots but the following day the sploches returned.

Ok, if, I the spot was not visible after nordicseal was applied and showed up after mega one. What happen is the contractor buffed through the nordicseal. Mega one will pull tannins through wherever there is no nordicseal present.

If, the contractor says they did not buff the nordicseal. Then my original claim is true. The original sanding did not remove all of the original finish - oil base polyurethane.

They can do a small test spot by scraping a spot down to bare wood and re-apply nordicseal and mega one to confirm. The hand sanding will not work unless they can take it down to bare wood.

Ok, i just spoke with our floor contractor for clarification. he said that the spots were coming through faintly after he applied nordicseal. went on to say that bona, and his rep advised that these were old floors and there would be irregularities… I’ll look into doing the small test spot like you advised. thanks so much for your thoughts!

I applied bona nordic sealer and its been over 48 hours according to directions I need to sand before applying the poly. Its only one room can I use a hand sanding block of 220 grit or should I use my electrical orbital sander. Im afraid sanding will ruin the finish.

Yes, a mechanical abrasion is needed for bonding. It's just a light sanding. You can perform it however you are most comfortable.

Hi G&S,

I have applied my 3rd coat of Bona Natural Primer on my parquet floor. I now have patches of white in different areas of the floor. These were not present on the first two coats which is why i done a 3rd coat. It is very noticeable now and i am not sure what to do? shall i sand these patches with either 150 - 180 grit then maybe feather them out with a light touch of Natural primer?

Would need to see images of lap marks

Apologies, find attached

I would redo the four rows that are affected by the lap marks.

Would you recommend a light sand with say a 120-150 grit?

Take it down to bare wood with whichever grit you used last. Light sanding will do you no good, waste of time.

Hi G&S, it is super useful reading the thread here!

We just sealed our floor with Bona Natural with a roller. But it has some uneven spot and makes the floor look cloudy. Here is the photo with two coats of Bona Natural and light finish sand. What can I do to fix this? Should I sand it to bare wood and redo it?

Also another question, do I need to sand out all the shining things for another coat of Bona Natural, or just lightly sand it to make some scratches ?

No photo came through

It should have evened out after two coats. What size nap are you using? Did it look like that after first coat? What size roller and handle type?

Did you sand it down to bare wood? Looks like you have prefinished flooring to begin with.

I didn't sand it to bare wood. Just used 80gr &120 gr to sand out the original water based coat.

The first roller‘s size was 18cm width with 1/2 inch nap. It looked uneven so I changed to 10cm width and ⅜-inch. Both are with normal hand type. And it does look like this after the first coat. So we are thinking if it is necessary to start over

You will need to start over. Sand all the old finish off. It needs to be at bare wood to avoid remnants of old finish bleeding through.

For your roller, I would use a 35 cm (14 in) long roller with a 1/4 inch nap microfiber roller. Use a adjustable style handle like Wooster's wide boy roller frame. This style of handle will keep the roller balanced and help avoid skip rolling. Make sure your roller has no dry spots in it. Dry spots will cause skip rolling, also. The handle will support the roller from both sides. This helps cut down on lap lines.

Thanks so much!

Last question. Is that Ok to use a hand sanding block with 240gr to sand between two coats of sealer? I don’t know if i need to sand out all the shining things before the next coat

If, it is within 24 hours, you do not need to dull all the shine. The product will chemically bond. You do want to make sure it is smooth.

Hi there,

We just had our very old pine floors re-finished (going from dark stain to a natural finish) - using Bona Natural Seal and Arboritec water-based finish (at the recommendatin of the flooring contractor).

For the most part they turned out beautifully - but after a couple of days a very distinct white edge appeared along the perimeter of the rooms, almost as if the sealer had pooled or had a thicker application.

Has anyone seen this before? Are there any minimally invasive ways to resolve this issue? The floors are over 100 years old and quite bare already - so we're really trying to avoid completely re-sanding.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!!

Photos attached - it basically looks like a ghostly discoloration along the perimeter of the two rooms.

Thanks so much,

Hayley

It's a lap mark from natural seal. Have to sand to fix.

Ahh ok, thanks so much for the reply. Will we have to sand the entire floor area? Or just the lapped area (perimeter)? And then do we re-seal and re-finish? Is it possible to have a uniform finish if you don't redo the entire area? Sorry for all the questions! Our flooring contractor made it seem a bit mysterious... so I'm just trying to understand what we're dealing with.

Thanks again for the help!

You can spot repair, it is difficult to get a perfect match. Otherwise, redo the entire floor. Sand, seal and poly for spot fix or full redo.

How about just putting some furnitures to cover it. It doesn't look that bad.

What is the main reason of those lap marks? Because the seal was uneven or because it dried too fast? Will those lap marks become unclear with time?

Thanks @G & S Floor Service. In your experience, what happens if the Bona seal is not allowed to fully dry? I also think the flooring contractor may have applied the top finish too quickly (they definitely did not wait the 2-3 hours I read about on the Bona website). Would this compromise the overall durability/finish of the floor? Or is there a chance it reacted poorly with the finish coat, since they did not use a Bona product?

Bona drifast seal may not be as compatible with Arboritec water base poly. This maybe the reason why you still have an odor lingering. The water base finish will cure faster than the oil sealer. If, the products are compatible. Both products will dry and cure simultaneously. You would need to contact Arboritec tech support and find out if, the product you used is comaptible with Bona Drifast sealer. The ceramic may not like the oil.

I have a similar situation as OP we used Nordic Seal followed by MegaOne finish. We definitely were misinformed about the Nordic Seal applicaiton and did not put on enough sealant the first time around. This left us with some nasty patchy spots here and there. Fortunately the majority of the floor turned out really nice, but we are not very excited aboiut the pictured spots which unfortunately ended up right in the middle of the hallway and super noticable.

Our sealant is the white tinted seal. We have tried to lightly scuff the finish and then reapply some white sealant to match the color but we are having a tough time blending it in. The white seems to need a lot to look the same tint and if you overlap any spots where the white is already fine then it keeps getting whiter and you can tell its layered up.

Given the cost to rent the machines again, re-doing the entire floor is something we would like to avoid at all costs. I have read the above comments about sanding down to wood, but should we be concerned about potentitally damaging other parts of the floor that area already in good shape?

Any advice would be much appreciated! thanks.

You can try a couple of options:

1. Sand down to bare wood and use a 1" synthetic sash brush to work the sealer in without overlapping into the existing finish. Have a wet rag on hand to clean any overlaps.
2. Tint the Mega one with a white colorant like Mixol and tint the patches. Keep in mind you will be building the coatings. Sheen maybe off when you finally reach your match.

Awesome thanks for the response. Going to try option 1 first and see how it goes.

I have a similar situation to @Samuel Hillis above. Used Bona Natural as the seal, followed by 2 x coats of HD Traffic in Extra Matte. Overall a great result but in one specific area some streaks. Interestingly the streaks didn't show until the finish coat #1 was applied - so I'm assuming it's an issue with the seal.

Is my best bet to sand down that area, re-seal, then do my 2x coats of HD Traffic? Part of the reason we went with the natural + extra matte is the retention of texture and look, so there's not a desire for it to be blemish free and/or perfect, but the streaks are noticeable beyond what we'd want to have, so I'd like to do what I can to remedy them. Hopefully our seal + finish combination will lend themselves well to what's already applied.

Appreciate any/all advice. Thank you!

So i applied bona classic sealer 24 hours ago any ideas on how i can fix this?