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That's a foot print in the stain not just in the finish. Yes the 'fix' is to to a patch repair. They would sand down the area to raw wood, restain that area and then apply 2 coats of finish (with all the appropriate cure times to be observed). Then the entire floor gets a final coat of finish. It is the FINAL coat that offers the continuous finish/gloss level.

To reduce your fears, Satin is a VERY forgiving finish. It has a lovely glow. This glow DULLS DOWN as it ages. It might start off as a HIGHER GLOSS Satin (be prepared) but it will ALWAYS settle down. This takes 1-3 months. So don't panic if you see a nice glowy floor on day 1. That will change.

Once the 3 months has passed, the floor will sit happily at the satin level it was destined to be. Then, like all floors, it slowly dulls down withe wear. Higher traffic areas dull a little faster. So your foot print area (being in a high traffic spot) will mostly likely dull down nicely.

The question becomes: Which bugs you more? A foot print such as the one you found (noticeable once you know it's there) or a *possible* sheen difference that will disappear with age?

There is only one person who can answer that question - and that's you. Permanent foot print vs. 'disappearing' gloss difference?

I'm not worried about the gloss level. I would worry about the stain variation.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. A visible difference in the finish would likely bother me MORE but a set of footprints left in an obvious place by my flooring contractor is going to bug me a lot too. Ideally, if the results of fixing it could be predicted, I wouldn’t have to choose between a sheen difference or footprints. It’s not an inexpensive job. I’m trying to get a better sense of the odds that it will be visible once the final coat of traffic is applied. As a layman, I just don’t know what kind of risk I’m taking to let them fix it two coats into the poly process.

If, they build up the coating to the same film thickness. When they apply the third coat, there will be no sheen difference. Everything will blend in.

Your biggest concern should be the stain matching. If, the touch up is done wrong. There will be a halo.

Thanks G&S, that makes sense. Feels like it would be hard to get the stain to match. The rest of the floor was buffed and sanded by machine. If they scrape this area off and resand and buff by using different equipment it feels highly unlikely that the stain color would be uniform which would be an issue itself even before I considered overlap etc. There is a unrelated small section of the floor that was repaired by hand after the floor had been sanded and buffed but before staining and there is a very visible difference in the stain color there. Do you think it’s even possible to repair it “right” or is this just an impossible task? Ugh.

It is possible to do spot repair by hand. The foot print needs to be lightly scraped off, sand and buff using the same sanding process. They would need to chase the grain in order to hide the difference. The stain will be different but you can trick the eye by making it a natural pattern, part of the floor. Then it won't jump out at you. Your eyes will easily pick up a circle, rectangle or square, but not a odd pattern.

Thanks, appreciate the input. I’ll have to think about it a bit more. I hate to mess with the stain. This section of the house is all newly installed white oak so the stain is super consistent. Other than the footprint, the result looks great. It’s the nicest part of the entire 1st floor stain job. The remainder of the house is existing white oak. The aged result is nice as well but far less consistent from board to board. I’m sure I’d notice a repair in the older wood less. I also realize that most folks probably wouldn’t notice the footprint but that’s a really hard one to swallow in a brand new floor.

If, you have a rug going over the space. I would leave it alone.

Unfortunately, it’s in a large opening to a great room addition. No way to make a rug make sense there and it’s in the direct light of a sliding glass door:(

Your options are as follow:

1. Test the skill of your flooring contractor. 50/50 chance he will be successful or fail.

2. If, he fails , you can have the floors redone from scratch. Make useful of the warranty. And hope the issue does not repeat and the quality does not drop.

3. Accept as is and ask for a discount.