OK I explain. It is a floating floor what we call in the UK engineered floor, so it is not solid throughout but a thickness of the wood mounted on a plywood base. It is a Malaysian wood, not so hard, so I suppose high heels could dent it perhaps, it is not the hardest. It is a click system not requiring glue, interesting. Now from Malaysia it says it has five factory coatings of which some contain aluminium oxide. It got worn out over the years. So a year ago I sanded the wood with the machines with the correct paper and vacuumed well. Then I applied one coat of Bona Traffic silk, you know the glossy one. I then noticed a number of parts were very coarse to the touch. So after some hours I sanded again with slightly finer paper but still coarse. Now I applied again Bona. Once again certain areas were coarse to the touch and you could see stains. So now I did a final very fine sanding but this was by hand with very fine paper particularly in the areas affected. It took me hours. Then I applied the third coat. I called the Bona representative who was at a loss!!! He gave me a bottle of Bona "refresh" it is a type of product to do another pass over. I applied it to the worse parts of the floor. Although one could see areas which were coarse to the touch and which did not look quite right the shine was sufficient to fool guests for Christmas. Now I am exactly one year on. In those area I mentioned there are now black marks. I attach some photos of the present situation with example of the black marks. (sorry I do not know how to create a new thread). I want to sand it and apply Bona again before New Year when my mother is visiting, my wife will just about tolerate me sanding on the 27th Dec. I had the suspicion it was the Bona product maybe the bottle I bought was old or had been exposed to low temperatures where I bought it from but the Bona representative told me it was very unlikely to be the case.

Well, I'm finally checking back on this thread. We just moved back into the house after having the new wood floors installed and then having the old and new floors all finished at the same time. DH would not budge on the finish, so we ended up with the Swedish Oil Finish. I mentioned to DH that some states have made Swedish Oil Finish illegal, but he still wanted that finish for our floors because that's what we had before (or so the guy who bid the job thought). Want to know something funny? The day before they started finishing the floors the guys working in our home stated that we had WATER based finish. So who knows? On the plus side, I'm very happy with the looks of our floors. They did an excellent job threading in new boards with the old to combine the new wood floors with the ones that were installed twenty years ago. You can't tell which is old and which is new---it all just looks like a beautiful new floor. We decided to go with the natural finish, and I couldn't be happier. We stayed in a hotel one day longer than the floor guys suggested, and I'm glad we did. Yesterday I spent much of the time parked in the car in front of our house, after DH had gone in (with a respirator on) and opened windows everywhere to start airing the house out. Later, we added fans and then the started the furnace on fan only. As I write this, I'm sitting in my house with fans running everywhere and almost every window open (on three floors). My eyes sting a little and my throat hurts; I have a nagging headache. I also have noticed some impact on my breathing. However, I'm hanging in there and haven't had a full-blown major asthma attack so far. Upstairs is definitely better than downstairs. I'm disappointed to have to deal with this, but it does seem to be getting better. I'm hoping to be able to sleep upstairs tonight, but if I can't, I'm going to ask my sister if I can sleep on her sofa tonight. Does anyone have information on the time it takes for the floor to fully cure (and, thus, for the off-gassing to end)? Also, I'm wondering about moving furniture back in. I've heard everything from two weeks to sixty days, so I'm not sure what to expect. The foor guys seem to only state that the vast majority of the chemicals are off-gassed in the first forty-eight hourss. That's all well and good, but with something this strong, the few remaining can be pretty significant. If I can get through this without a trip to the doctor/hospital, it will be worth it. I'm so excited to finally have this done.

As others have suggested, the sanding job was imperfect. The darker areas are most likely left-over finish that was never removed completely. If you bring in a professional, s/he *MIGHT be able to sand/patch specific areas. Might. No guarantees. And if this is present on every wall in every room, then the 'sand and patch' isn't going to be possible. It is faster and cheaper (labour costs for a professional) to have them sand it all down and start again. If this is left over finish then it is underneath the new application. To deal with it properly you must remove everything ON TOP so that you can sand down to raw wood once again. Sigh. Yes that means you need to do a sand/refinish once again. Edge sanding is a real b!tch to deal with. As you have discovered. It must be done in a specific way with machines (palm sander anyone)....which must follow the same grit levels as your big machine. That means if you used the 80, 100, 120 grit system on your big machine...then the palm sander must have the same 3 grit levels used as well...in the same sequence. The next question you are going to ask is, "Can't I just leave it if it doesn't bother me?" The answer is simple: "Sure....BUT you could get finish failure because of the two different chemicals decided not to bond properly." It is your decision. You can leave it as-is for now. You can move back into the space and hope for the best. The best case scenario is you cover everything up (because the issue is at the walls = furniture covers most of it) and you don't notice it for the next 20 years. Worst case scenario is it starts to bubble and peel in a short amount of time (less than 1 year) and it requires a full sand and refinish very quickly after you move all your furniture back in. It's your call. It is your home and your floor. Right now you have the benefit of an empty home and (probably) still have access to all the equipment needed. To achieve a full fix is very simple right now. If you leave it until later you will have to move everything out of the way again...

My best guess is it was still 'fresh' when you moved in. It should be at its toughest by now. Even though these finishes SAY they are fully cured in 10 days (10 days=95% cure = 'full cure' to the manufacturer) they still need another 2 weeks to get the last 5% over and done with. Again, this is HIGHLY dependent on the ACTUAL product used. And the 'cure times' are greatly affected by the humidity and heating/cooling going on IN the home before during and after the finish was applied. Traditionally the finish is applied over 2-3 days (day 1 = primer + 1 coat finish; day 2 = 2nd coat finish + light sanding + 3rd coat). The primer and first coat of finish *can be applied on the first day...but they don't have to be. But these coats need to go down sooner rather than later (too long between coats means more abrading). Once these coats have been applied the house is left in a livable state (heating/cooling system on as if someone were living there). After the first two weeks of cure, the floor could then be 'covered' with ram board to protect it from the rest of the trades people moving in and doing 'finishing' work. Once the ram board is taken off then the floor is 'babied' for another couple of weeks just to be sure. My 'finish' senses are telling me this was a fresh, delicate floor finish that may not have been fully 'hardened'. A rush to move into the space may have lead to a soft floor at a time when you needed it to be super tough. It needed to be babied for the first two weeks that you moved in. I'm going the 'worst is over' when it comes to scratching...but the damage is done. Talk to your builder and get the name of the product and the application schedule. At the same time ask if there is anything that can be done to add more finish (buff and coat) in the Traffic HD (offer some financial incentive to get this moving faster). But it will mean you will need to move everything off the floors, and then allow the final coat to 'toughen up' for another few weeks. You will have to be SUPER careful while you wait for the Traffic HD to harden. If you were in a hurry to get into the home in the first place, I'm going to guess the 'buff and coat' is not going to be easy to manage.