I’m restoring a turn of 1900’s living room here in Providence, plaster repairs, painting, some window replacemnents hardwood trim restoration. I subbed the floors to a young neighbor who is just starting out in the floor business and he’s been stumped by a problem we’ve run into with the oak floors. When we pulled the carpeting up we discovered a stain which we’ve come to a agreenent about is probably spilled wax on the T&G oak floor. After sanding some surface contaminent came out the majority of the stain remains. My solution is to cut it out and rplace it; It’s about a 12″ x 16″ amoeba shaped blotch, but I hate to do that to this old floor. PS please don’t tell me to buy another rug.
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when you sanded the "candle wax" stain, it probably was driven deeper into the wood-the heat from sanding will do that.
Buy a Fein Multimaster or if you wish, one of it's clones and cut out the bad boards, toothing the new or replacement (from a closet) in so it looks good.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about.
http://www.quittintime.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4301/an/0/page/0#Post4301
Some floors were waxed, these are a bitch to refinish as you can't just screen them, they need a thorough sanding.
What Calvin said. But you can do it with a sharp chisel.
I agree that the best course of action is to cut out the stained boards and bring that floor back to a liveable condition. It's not that big of a deal and with the right tools doesn't take all that long. Just be careful when sanding and choosing the finish and your patch will blend in pretty well. Slightly tinting the finish and/or sanding sealer is often needed to match the old floor. Like golf anyone can do it...but to do it well requires more than beginners luck. Cheers!
90% of us can do it.
I'm part of the color blind 10% who shouldn't try it.
The mechanical part of replacing the floor is pretty easy.
The color matching is impossible.
When I did my Mom's floors, I bought a clear finish, and then gave her a few bottles of universal tint, and had her blend up the finish, until she thought it matched. She had a minor in art so she probably got it pretty close, and definitely way closer than I would have.