Pete's Hardwood Floors, Inc.

Patching. It's a tricky business sure, but it's hard to believe it could go THIS wrong.
A customer initially considered buying reclaimed birch from Pete's to DIY some board replacement, but let a contractor handle it instead. The contractor used new maple in the patched areas, which left them bright white against the older birch. The customer, rightly, complained to the company about the poorly matching patches. The final photo was their idea of a "solution." The horror.

Sorry for not posting an answer yesterday - we were really enjoying all your theories! Here's our explanation of what we think happened.

The floor had been successfully coated with one layer of waterborne sealer. The opaque, dusty material started to appear at the end of the first gallon of topcoat. Only one gallon was used for about 700sqft, so the spread rate was high. And we noticed that the floor coated at the "beginning" of the gallon showed no whiteness at all, but it was GLOSSY. Bingo. The coater admitted they had not stirred or even agitated the gallon of polyurethane, which was a modern matte finish, chock full of silica flatteners. So, this last room was coated with the dregs of the gallon, when it was down to just solids and flattening agents. We can't imagine how it even flowed enough to apply!
How was it fixed? It took a combination of a 60grit screen on a 16" buffer, plus hand-scraping around the edges where it was thickest.
The moral of this story: stir your polyurethane.

This was the most mysterious and confounding set of photos we had ever received. It still makes us queasy to look at them. We figured out what happened, but it took an hour of crawling over the floor. Can you explain what caused this? We'll listen to your theories, then give you the answer tomorrow.

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Look what a customer made for us! It's a whole sample board of Rubio on Ash which is not a common flooring wood, but super-popular with our furniture and cabinet-building clients. A treasure.

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We thought about tagging the satan guy as Dome Hepot, but that would have been wrong.

So, we’re a little slow- it takes us time to digest new ideas- but we’ve collected our thoughts on our trip to Milwaukee for the 2023 National Wood Flooring Association Expo. Or stop by the store and we’ll talk your ear off!

Learning new Rubio Monocoat tricks at the NWFA trade show!

White lines all around the edges of floor boards usually indicate water troubles. If there isn't a leak, the most common wood floor water catastrophes are caused by steam or carpet cleaners. Please don't use them on your wood floors. Not ever. Just stop.

Should hardwood floor repairs be invisible? It is difficult to make repairs seamless, especially in older floors where the wood has changed or may no longer be available. So, embrace the difference! Perfect repairs are boring. Put your carpentry and parquetry skills to use and turn that humble patch into a feature.

Sometimes you pop back to the shop to help a customer out on a Sunday morning. And pften that customer is so classy, they bring you a fabulous pastry!
I love owning a small business.

Here's a customer who paid attention to last week's post about buying small amounts of flooring at our "open stock" rates to fix an unsightly problem. He spent $11.36 and transformed this problem into joy.

What product can extend the life of your hardwood floor finish by three years, but most people never bother with?

Floor protectors. Everybody buys them once, but never changes them. Floor protectors are like furnace filters: they only work if you replace them REGULARLY.

Pete's has the longest-lasting, best-adhering, and cutest floor protectors available. So many sizes and shapes. You need them, so buy lots https://www.peteshardwoodfloors.com/product-category/floor-protectors/

Here's an issue that comes up every spring. People start moving their furniture around, wanting to do a Big Clean and find discolored areas like these. Everybody hopes we have a magic cleaner that will fix them. But sun exposure darkens floor finishes deep enough to require resanding. If you have southern facing light on your floors, a clear UV film over the windows is your best defense.

You think you can't sand your own floors? Of course you can. Check out this ski school in Vermont. We don't rent sanders or even give lessons in Vermont, but this group of skiers learned how to sand and finish their floor, over the phone. If they could do this, think of what you could accomplish with some hands-on training. , ,

Did you know that Pete's sells wood flooring by the piece? You don't have buy a full bundle; we carry pre-measured pieces of red oak, white oak, maple, and fir. We even have carefully sorted reclaimed flooring for your patching needs!

According to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, refinishing your floors provides a 147% return on investment when selling your home. Sand your floors by yourself, which is about half the cost of hiring a remodeler, and your ROI goes up to 294%. Pete's is just the business you need to enable this investment in your property. And it will be triple the value because you'll be so dang proud of yourself.

What do we have under here? Why, it's a magnificent birch tread!
Sanding a whole staircase can be daunting, but you can start with just the first tread. This was the perfect size project for a winter afternoon - they didn't even use a real sander, just lots of scrapers and a palm sander. Coated with Pallmann Pall-X Clear and two coats of Pall-X Gold.

Is your floor fine, but just too shiny for you? Did you know that you can change the sheen of an existing floor, just by applying one coat of polyurethane over it? Half a day and $200 and you can stop your living room looking like a gymnasium. It's called a "screen and recoat" and we can show you how. This procedure is so secret there's barely a hashtag for it.

What do we do in the quiet winter months at Pete's? We get ready for the busy spring months! Come on down and look at all the new sample boards we've made - every finish we sell on every common Minnesota flooring wood. So. Many. Choices.

It's winter. You might be indoors staring at your floors. A lot. We know you're finding flaws in your hardwood and are wondering how to fix them. Pete's is ALL about how to fix flaws. Just in your floor though. YOU are flawless.

Rubio spot repair What happens when you get a scratch in your newly coated Rubio Monocoat floor? You can fix it.

Happy 2023 from Pete's Hardwood Floors!
Is this the year you finally tackle your flooring issues?

You've got a nice long holiday weekend coming up - think of all the floors you can sand in four days! Well, three days, because you should take Thanksgiving off. Either way, our edgers are all dressed up and ready for all of your holiday sanding needs.
All equipment rental rates are drastically reduced for the long weekend, so reserve yours while we still have availability!

You just installed brand-new, unfinished hardwood in your home. Those boards felt perfectly smooth as you nailed them in, but now the "experts" are telling you the floor still has to be sanded. Is this legit?
The experts are right this time. Can you see all the high edges revealed by the low light in the second photo. You have to sand those level, or your sweet feet will be full of splinters and unhappiness.
Check out our blog post, "Why do I have to sand my brand-new, raw wood floor? https://www.peteshardwoodfloors.com/why-do-i-have-to-sand-my-brand-new-raw-wood-floor/

The most important thing you can do to ensure a great sanded floor is to change your sandpaper on the regular. And we tell every customer what that means for their machine, as you can see from our stern-but-loving signage. And yet, you can’t always make the horse drink. Don’t be like this customer; change your paper!

In the 50s, these prefinished, walnut-pegged floors were the must-have for your rambling ranch home. They fell out of fashion and many were torn out or covered with carpet. So it's like finding a treasure when a customer unearths one and brings it back from obscurity. And we even found a vintage advertisement for the same Bruce floor!

For SHAME!
My good people, wood is hard. But no wood floor, not even the hickory, oak, and maple in these photos, will survive a dishwasher being dragged across it. Wood is hard enough to resist centuries of walking and living, but heavy items with tiny feet can gouge floors deeper than you want to sand. Please stop being surprised by this. Put down a nice piece of masonite over your wood before you move that piano. As the photo shows, you can't fix a deep scratch with filler. You have to sand or scrape to the edge of every board affected by the scratch. Don't do like this contractor, and just sand two little lines where the damage was.

Lookee how great our customers are at sanding!

Before and after comparisons! Scroll through to check out the results of our hard work of the last two weeks. Big thanks to @peteshardwoodmn for the rentals, supplies, refresher lesson, coaching, and couples therapy! (Mostly kidding). This Thursday, we start the downstairs! #victorianhouses #victoriana #saintpaulmn #oldhouse #diy #hardwoodfloors #maple

Pete's famous "Sorry We're Open" sign has at last been immortalized on a t-shirt. For $15 (or in exchange for providing us some great Instagram photos) you can be sorry too!

Shout out to the great staff ! TIL that all as soon as the power came back on in Austin, all the Rubio employess came in to the warehouse over the weekend to pack and ship all the orders that were delayed by the storm. UPS had to send FOUR trucks to pick it all up on Monday. Rubio is a fine product, sold by dedicated people; you should buy more of it.
Photos are throwback to a year ago today, when I got to go to Rubio school, and ride the wooden bike through the warehouse, eat some barbeque, and learn all the Rubio secrets.

Can I just recoat this floor?
Sorry, sander friend, the short answer is no; this floor is well beyond the possibility of just recoating. It's time to sand this thing. Want the long answer? Check out the blog post at peteshardwoodfloors.com.

Here at Pete's we take care of the equipment you rent. Even when it's heckin' -15F we use a compressor outdoors to blow all the dust out of the machines, remove build-up from wheels and inside the chassis, and examine the cords for all those cuts that customers forget to tell us about. And we run every machine (with sandpaper on!) before it goes back into the rental pool. This is how a real business shows love to its customers.

Pete's will be closed for Christmas, but there are excellent rental rates to be had while we are shut! Pick up on Wednesday, December 23, return on Monday December 28, and pay for only TWO days of rental.
Thursday, December 24 Closed
Friday, December 25 Closed
Saturday, December 26 Closed

Pete's will be closed for New Year's:
Thursday, December 31 Closed
Friday, January 1 Closed
Pick up equipment on Wednesday, December 30, 2020, return on Saturday, January 2, 2021 and pay for just 1 1/2 days of rental!

Pete's Hardwood Floors, Inc. updated their business hours.

Score! We just bought over 600 square feet of beautiful c1920s maple, already planed, for all your historic floor patching needs. Or if you're trying to add a little gravitas to your she-shed.

We struck gold! 600 square feet of pristine, freshly planed c1920 maple for all your historic patching needs. Or to give your new she-shed some gravitas.

Pete's will be closed from Saturday, September 5 through Monday, September 7 for Labor Day. If you plan to sand over that weekend, you can pick up machines on Friday, September 4. But get your reservations in soon; the sanders are going fast!

Even floors that look perfectly normal can be hiding a finish that will melt and clog up sandpaper. This isn’t a problem; it’s a solution! If this happens to you, drop to a coarser grit, which holds more melty finish and lasts longer, which will save you money. Did you know that Pete’s stocks 12 grit and 16 grit for just this purpose?

Where do you get your wood floor advice? And how do you know you're renting a quality sander? This DIYer trusted his local general rental store to guide him, but they told him to cut against the grain when he didn’t need to, and they rented him a defective drum sander. 😤😱And he ended up with a plaid floor. Yoikes!!! He lives too far away to rent from Pete’s, but he bought a $25 consult session and we talked him through the fix. And he sent us his plaid-free “after” picture. The moral of the story: trust Pete’s for both consultations and rentals. Sometimes $25 can save you $200. @ Saint Paul, Minnesota