Certain paint is made just for floors. If you're looking for a satin finish, you should use latex floor paint. If you want a semi-gloss or gloss finish, use alkyd, polyurethane or latex floor paint. Prepare the wood floor with a light sanding. Whether your wood floor was stained or previously painted, use sandpaper or a palm sander to lightly go over the finish so that the floor will accept the paint. Use a fine-grit paper for this process. ciciliot

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.

That is a factory finished floor. No stain is allowed unless the entire floor is sanded down to raw wood and refinished properly. So "no" they cannot 'stain' this to look right. They allowed 'wet' applications to go forward without protecting the surface as the flooring manufacturer SPECIFIES. AKA: Wood floors go in LAST...all wet work must be finished before floors are installed. If this cannot be avoided then PROPER flooring protection MUST BE supplied by the contractor. Proper protection would be RAM Board (very expensive stuff...which is what the contractor was trying to avoid...the expense). Stop cleaning. Leave everything 'as-is'. Anything you do to this floor *could be used against you (as in "homeowner cleaned improperly...I'm not responsible for undoing what homeowner did"). Any/all corrections must be done by the contractor. Let them find out how expensive this is going to get. It is a lesson every builder/contractor/non-flooring professional needs to learn. Let them learn it. Use the power of the photo. Take blue painter's tape and stick it onto each and every plank that has this issue. Take a whole home photograph and SEND them in an email to the contractor/builder. This does TWO things. It DOCUMENTS the problem in pictures and it DOCUMENTS your COMPLAINT to the builder. Then you DOCUMENT every response. If they respond verbally, then write an email summarizing the conversation. It looks like the painting crew 'tried' to clean but didn't get everything. It is up to the BUILDER to clean everything and go over every thing on the touch up list. You also want to dictate the 'acceptability' of the cleaning in your email. You want to point out that the cleaners used (by the builder) will NOT harm the factory finish and that if they cannot be cleaned satisfactorily (using cleaners that do NOT harm the finish) then you will require the builder to either: A. Replace all boards effected; or B. Replace the manufacturer's warranty that they JUST voided, with their own warranty Either way you are going to scare the builder into doing it 'right'. It is an expensive lesson they HAVE to learn. Once you have blue-taped the ENTIRE floor/home, please load the room photos. It will give us a better understanding of how much of an issue this is going to be.

If the smell is unbearable after pulling one plank then I will hazard a guess the stain is either rather NEW or it has obtained LONG TERM multiple soaks. Either way, the former homeowner KNOWINGLY covered it up. Here's my issue. The homeowner knew of the damage and, depending on how long ago your purchased the home, could be legally and financially responsible for the 'fix'. I don't know your state nor how long ago you purchased....but talking with your Realtor will help you understand what type of recourse you have. The 'fix' = rip out all the current hardwood to expose the layer underneath. Then you will need to investigate (ie. rip out a few planks in the worst places) to see how much the subfloor is damaged. The possibility of ripping out the old hardwood AND the subfloor is high. And that gets expensive. That's why you want to find out what your recourse is with the purchase and who is responsible for paying for the damage.