please help

[glmantra]

I hope someone here can help me.. please

Im in the process of remodeling a 140yo house and just began work on the floors. The floors had been covered up for years with linoleum in one room and overlayment and vct in others. I just finished sanding this room with a 60 grit getting ready to go back over it with finer grit but wanted to get an idea of what it was going to look like ... since i planned on just using a poly i figured wetting it a bit with a cloth would bring out the color and grain to see.

First off I havent a clue what kind of wood this is if someone could help me there i would appreciate it. But my real problem is the floor has light spots throughout it... heavier in places. Is this because of the kind of wood it is and how would i go about fixing it? I have attached 2 pics of dif areas of the floor.

thank you very much for helping!!

Edited May 23, 2011 by Paul-Marcel
Corrected image URLs

[TimV]

It appears to be pine flooring. The light/dark areas could be from wear prior to the floor coverings or from the adhesive used for the floor coverings. The way to fix it is to sand the floor and reapply a stain and topcoat.

Tim

[AMarshall]

I agree that the floor is likely pine or another softwood, depending on where your house is located. Since you just finished sanding to 60 grit, it is unlikely that further sanding will help. The blotchiness may be a couple of things. Pine is natuarlly prone to being blotchy, and over time something may have soaked into the fibers of the wood floor. The water may be exaggerating the blotch.

If you are planning for a clear finish, I would test an area with dewaxed shellac such as BullsEye SealCoat. This should reduce the amount of blotch, and you can topcoat with most anything you like. In any case, it is unlikely to ever look like a brand new floor and the character of the 140 year old wood is part of the history of the house.

[HoboMonk]

Waterlox!

[suiciedchild]

I have to agree that it is probably pine flooring , but i think that the blotchyness is caused from something from the floor that was put on top of it , you can tell because the blotches continue in shape across the boards, where if it were from it being the natural blotchyness of the pine you would see the blotches drop off at the ends of the boards, so sanding it may still be a viable solution, floor refinishers can/will start with a 36 grit belt to make thier first cut and remove a decent amount . if the flooring is that old it is probably pretty thick too , try to find a spot where you can determine how thick the boards are ( floor vents if they are present). then you can determine how much you can take off. Bona -Kemi makes alot of products that are really good if you want to go with water based floor finish and also has a sealer product availible that should help control the blotches from being pine. Lenmar is my personal favorite for urethane based finishes. i would recomend the water based- if you are going to redo a house or even just a couple rooms just based on how bad some if them can smell and drying times.

[Vic]

It doesn't all look like "blotch" to me. Blotching wont have sharp definition to the start and stop like this does. I agree, it's probably something that was on top of the wood. More sanding, if there is enough material.