Definitely use the felt pads and buy at least 4 of the sliders your friend mentioned. The sliders (without the covers) can even be used when moving furniture on carpet. I use the felt pads on the feet of my breakfast chairs and replace them every few months. Grit/dirt will collect in the felt pads and they will slowly scratch the floor if not changed out over time. So far, no scratches on the floor under my chairs! I've also used towels in the past but be warned that a heavy piece of furniture may still leave a mark when using them. I learned that the hard way when I moved a small table across my floor. Fortunately, I had only gone about 4 feet and just happened to stop to make sure nothing was being damaged. It left an indentation about 1/8" wide.

If you like the current color I recommend adding to it and using an flush divider, which we generally call a header. One advantage of this (besides costing less, being less disruptive and causing less consequential damages) is that in the future the kitchen could be recoated up to the header. Your kitchen will get several times more wear than most areas of the house and will require recoating more frequently. It's often a challenge finding a place to stop the coat that doesn't show a stop-line, meaning that we often have to recoat more area than necessary. If you were more interested in making it perfect rather than acceptable, I would recommend paying the floor guy for the wood he bought, wait until you're ready for a kitchen renovation, lace the wood in at that time and refinish everything. They may not be willing to store the wood so you might need to find a conditioned space to store it. This strategy would also protect you if something on the new kitchen varies slightly from the existing.

You have standing grain. That tells me he didn't 'knock down' the grain between coats. Pine has LOTS of tannins in it. It is normal to use a PRIMER/SEALANT over white oak, pine, fir, etc. to stop the wood going a snick darker. My other concern is the *possibility you have adhesion failure. That is what happens when the finish does NOT grab onto the wood properly. We often see light 'white looking' patches on wood floors where the finish is LIFTING off of the wood. I can't tell if that is happening but it is something you will want to understand before you chat with refinisher. Here are SOME of the things you want to know about your job: 1. How MANY GALLONS of product were applied over the 3 coats? 2. How many SQUARE FEET of flooring was finished? 3. How much time between coats? 4. How long before YOU moved back into the space? 5. How long before you did your FIRST WET cleaning (ie. slightly water-damp mop run over the wood)? What I'm looking for is: 1. Bona Traffic has coverage of (roughly) 300-350sf PER GALLON on the FIRST COAT! That's it. 2. A light sanding was done to KNOCK DOWN the grain 3. Bona Traffic 400sf per GALLON for 2nd coat and for the third coat 4. Only TWO COATS can be done PER DAY regardless of the 'dry time' 5. Light sanding done before the last coat (you need at least ONE light sanding down...either after the first coat or before the third coat...some guys do it twice and they are worth their weight in gold....just sayin'). 6. 7-10 days FOR FULL CURE before the floors are used (especially wet or splash areas). Ideally the house would remain empty for these 10 days from the time the last coat was applied). 7. First 'damp' cleaning is done 14 - 28 days AFTER the last coat was applied. NOTHING SOONER. Even though the full cure has happened, the finish is still soft and susceptible to water intrusion. To do the math for your finish amount, let's PRETEND you have 1000sf of flooring: First coat = 3 GALLONS of Bona Traffic (is it Traffic HD or is it the traditional TRAFFIC????) Light sanding Second Coat = 2.5 - 3 gallons of Traffic (nothing sooner than 6-8 hours after first coat) (light sanding done if the SANDING is NOT done after first coat) Third Coat = 2.5 gallons of traffic (nothing sooner than 6-8 hours after second coat or NEXT DAY) Total gallons: 8 gallons to be used over 1000sf of flooring. Assume $150/gallon = $1200 for polyurethane alone. Labour is on top of that. Total cost to sand and finish (install is different): $5 - $7/sf for Bona Traffic HD. There you go...that should give you a great place to start. Feel free to fill us in if you KNOW something did or did not happen.

yes, there is definitely a finish on top. They said they used a professional paint sprayer to spray on the finish....it is not super shiny because we wanted a satin finish. I was trying to get good pictures of the stains, so it may look like there is no finish on there but there definitely is. I was kind of wondering if a sprayed on finish isn't that protective compared to if you put the finish on with a brush?