Tinan, we did the radiator cover in our recent DIY bathroom, and unfortunately, now need to do it in every room because they look so much better. gsciencechick we have a couple. A Rigid, not my favorite but excellent for sanding drywall with good dust collection, a B&D Mouse, great for tight places, and an old Milwaukee that my dad gave me. When that goes I'll buy a Bosch or Porter Cable. Thanks for the compliments, it feels great because it was a lot of work. We had a pro replace the ceiling and do some drywall repair, that is one task where I'll hire a pro every time. Our guy is so meticulous he had barely any sanding to do, unlike when I tackle drywall.

Right out of the gate, Greg mills commented that the man sanding may have been used to sanding oaks and maples instead of softer woods. Australian cypress is harder that oak and maple, not softer. It can be fixed, as someone said, it's a resand, not another coat. icutmyfinger showed pics of them sanding. They said they used hummels but they are clearly Galaxy. This terrible sand job was caused by a few things. Bad grit choice that didn't sand evenly. Even though they first cut on an angle , the machine rode the knots and didn't cut them. ( let's put on a used belt, we can save money! ) After the angle they may have run other cuts at an angle, but I suspect this was a 36,80 job. The last cut ran straight and the rear wheel rode the knots and contributed to the waves. Also the machine is probably not well maintained or adjusted so a bad rear wheel, bad drum and incorrect pressure on the drum only exacerbated the problem. A hardplate, trio or similar planetary may have helped but these machines won't fix bad sanding. This is just plain bad sanding. Glennfc made a good point about 'why resand because they wanted a satin finish'. My guess: I'll bet that the owner of Reliable saw the bad sanding and used that as his excuse to resand and fix it, which was good. His second set of guys, who were also $1 a foot subs, did an equally terrible job, probably worse, since they obviously also had zero understanding of abrasives, grit sequence or best sanding practices. Jfcwood is correct on this: it's 100% Reliables fault and it's their responsibility to redo it. I'm sure he's spent a boatload on traffic, but I'll bet he didn't pay either of the subs for the lousy job. So he got his deposit, bought finish, didn't pay the subs and he still made money. Then he walked away. Jfcwood is way off on this: only 1 in 3 will notice. ?? This is a high end home, obviously, in Long Island with huge amounts of light coming through huge windows. His friends and company are used to looking at quality. This floor job is complete garbage and needs to be redone Here's the only exception: If he chose his floor company based on lowest price, then he deserves this. If he talked Reliable down in price, he deserves this whole mess. i hope icutmyfinger got a remedy for this, as it's a black eye on the whole industry. If he didn't and wants to I have 3 friends on Long Island that aren't afraid of "exotic wood" and have extensive experience with best sanding practices and this is my opinion based on 32 years of sanding floors, making mistakes, fixing the mistakes and learning from my mistakes. My math may be suspect, however I was referring only to the remedies suggested, and the causes. Id sill be interested in knowing how this turned out if you guys are in Phoenix, stop me and say hello. I'll be teaching in TechZone

I like to make analogies between my old house and an old man or woman: Getting 50 or 70 year old wood floors refinished is like bringing a middle aged person home from the hospital and giving them PT until they spring back like new. Getting 140 year old floors refinished is like bringing a 90 year old person home from the hospital and needing round the clock care and knowing you might have to call in hospice. I owned a home with 160 year old floors. The honest and good floor refinishers I spoke with told me I needed a flooring restoration professional, not just a refinisher. I got enough quotes and people to look at them that I could tell who was going to do a crappy job and who was going to turn me down because they couldn't do a great job with what was there. None of the top notch restoration pros wanted to do my medium sized home in the city as most did massive projects on gigantic historic estates out in the burbs with tremendous budgets. They were usually hired by architectural firms and contractors who specialize in this. Our floor had splinters, gouges, nails, you name it. There was not much left to be sanded and little gloss left on top. Many who came to give me a quote said it needed to be replaced, which kind of killed me, and I never had the heart to do it. Unfortunately, it took me until we were staging the house for sale to find a good solution: I had leftover milled planks of heart pine from the 1850's that I had used for our kitchen floor. A handyman used the extras to cut in patchworks to the really damaged areas. I then mixed stains to get a good color match and stained the patches myself. (Sometimes you can take flooring up from closets to make patches, but that had already been done in our house and no good closet flooring was left.) I colored in discoloration and gouges with stain pens. It was like a huge coloring book and incredibly meditative and satisfying. I purchased very large jute rugs from Facebook Marketplace that probably "fell off a truck". The colors blended well with my floors, covered the most offending markets, yet still left enough of the historic floors visable to be appreciated. After 9 years of living in a house where I had to tell guests - "Don't take off your shoes or you might get a Civil War splinter!" I was able to now be barefoot in my own home. Ultimately, your pros butchered parts of your floors. But I don't know that someone else would have done a much better job with such soft historic floors, and these folks might not be able to do any better of a job trying to repair their mistakes. And, nobody would have made them look new. You've gotta embrace imperfection when you live in a house that is so old. I feel your pain!

Yes, your finish looks more like a a hard wax oil system and not a polyurethane system as mentioned. Water spotting is normal. Once the water dries, the color goes back to normal. As far as durability goes, this would depend on the brand used and whether if, the contractor used the hardener or not. For daily cleaning, you will need the proper cleaners to use. Every brand is different and it requires a certain amount of concentrate to do the job properly. You want to be brand specific when choosing cleaners. Your contractor should have provided you with all the information - do's and dont's, regarding the product used. Also, should have disclosed all the information about the product so, that you can make a informed decision in choosing the right finish that is a fit for your family and lifestyle. Rubio has a product called "Refresh" and Ciranova has "Intensive cleaner". You would mix a cap full to a liter of water. For, extra strength use two cap fulls. You would then follow it up with a flooring "soap" which replenishes the oil. You will need to find out which brand was used on your floors to get the proper maintenance information.