Stains and wood floors (hardwood floor, vinyl, refinishing, color)

[Sam I Am]

I must have my search parameters wrong...

We have a home built in 1872 with hardwoods all the way through. They are very dull and lifeless unless I get on my hands and knees and wash them and there are spill stains that appear to have almost eaten through the finish, like something very acidic was there. I can buff 'em up with a little lemon oil but within a week they look bad again, the floors look bad, blah, blah.

So......anyone got any cures for this, or is it time to have all the hardwoods re-done? As far as being in good condition, they are - and I've read the posts that this is nothing I want to do myself. So can I strip and buff and wax, or do I need to do the full deal? Bearing in mind, of course, that we have six Rottweilers and a mutt, so I guess marine poly is a must.

Also, we've been told there are hardwoods under the kitchen floor, which is vinyl. To our knowledge there is only one layer of vinyl, but I wouldn't be surprised to find true old linoleum in there since the kitchen is definitely out of date, MAYBE 50's style. Should we try to resurrect the floors or just call it a wash and lay new flooring? I have a feeling if real linoleum is under there that the floors are totally ruined anyway and I wonder about the durability of even the original wood floors with the amount of very heavy traffic we have through our kitchen.

Finally, if the wood floors have to be re-done in the main living areas, will the quarter molding need to be pulled up and scrapped? I doubt this house originally had anything but wide plank molding, but if you get rid of quarter round then you have to paint...and that's a whole 'nother thread....

[lovemaine]

We recently had our hardwood floors refinished. We also had some pretty bad stains. We actually had to have some of the boards replaced since sanding wasn't getting the deeper stains out. As for the quarter molding, our floor guy did replace all the old stuff. It was stained the same color as the floor, so it looks like really nice. Don't know about your kitchen floor. Sounds like a big job though if you have a lot of layers on there. We had vinyl floors in our bathrooms and had ceramic tile installed right over it. (There was only one layer of vinyl though, plus it was in good shape.) I'm sure a hardwood floor installer could tell you if the wood under the linoleum is salvageable.
Good luck!

[golfgal]

We installed some new wood and refinished the existing wood in our old house-we had someone do it more accurately. It takes a good week to sand/refinish the floors because of the drying time between coats but I LOVE how they look. Unless you have a lot of big, deep stains, etc. sanding and refinishing is the way to go. If you get at least 3 coats of poly you shouldn't have too many issues with the dogs, etc. The only thing you will regret is that you didn't do it sooner.