Your concerns over damage to the wood by water or pebbles in shoes or high heels are all valid. Bad news is there is not a product invented yet to eliminate those concerns. High heels or any shoes for that matter should never be worn on the floors. And the finish will delay the damaging effects water causes. But wont prevent it. Polyurethanes gives you the best in protection and looks.

See my similar (but far less costly) experience with this post: Ever bought white oak, but got red? And the pink part was not a trick of the eye, but literally a staining of the treatment that I could scrape off with my fingernail. I have had this happen with antique doors I am refinishing as well... As you can see by some of the professionals' answers, there is no specific "white oak" tree, nor "red oak" tree, but rather a bunch of different species that get slotted into the two separate boxes and a few in between. (For example, we started a green leaf maple and red leaf maple in the same pot; they grafted onto each other before we planted in yard, and the resulting, single tree is somewhere in between...plenty of trees in a forest can do something similar. ) Plus, what we've Iearned is that in some mills, the decisions to figure out what's what once logs arrive to be planed is often done by "looking at them." The only way you can know for sure is to send a sample scraping of several of the boards to NWFA or university botany department to have it tested to see if what you have fits neatly into one or the other category... To the other poster, If it ended up grey after being refinished, this could be a purple hue of the red and white of the wood's tannins mixed with blue-ish undertone that is used to make white "cool." White is not free of other colors, and "natural" sealers have a tiny bit of white in them...

Sorry, just saw this. I feel two coats of finish is sufficient when applied over sealer at the prescribed rate. This is especially true for Traffic which goes on heavier (350-400 sq. ft/gallon for Traffic, 500-600 for Mega). More coats of finish make the floor smoother, filling in the grain, and making wear and scratches more evident. If you're in a situation where you need more longevity, you can have more coats applied and live with the consequences. In most residential situations my customers want their floor recoated when it looks bad due to wear and scratches, not when the finish wears through. The surface accumulates the same amount of wear and scratches whether it has 2 coats or 20 coats, at which point it will look a bit shabby and require a recoat.

Hi! What did you end up doing? I’m facing the same problem.