Floor finisher put poly over shellac & ruined my floors! How to fix?

last month

last modified: last month

I am really at a loss. I am a first-time homeowner and after buying my house, I wanted to protect my investment so I decided to spend a considerable amount of money getting the floors a new buff and coat before I moved my stuff in. Less than a year later, the floors were bubbling and peeling up all over the place.

Setting aside the fact that the floor person refused to do anything about it (it was less than a week beyond his "one-year warranty" period), and all the steps it took for me to figure out what the cause was:

I believe that the previous owners applied amber shellac to all of the floors, and the floor person I hired did not identify this and foolishly applied a satin-finish polyurethane atop it, which is now causing the layers to separate.

<weeeeps> So what do I do now? I have three questions:

How do I fix the areas that are bubbling up and peeling? (See pics below as examples.)
How do I prevent this from happening everywhere else in my house?
I pulled out some old kitchen cabinets, so I have some areas of flooring I now need to patch in with this same wood to match. How do I match the existing color of the amber shellac, which now also has the look of the coat of satin polyurethane atop it, without getting myself into this same mess with the new boards? In other words, how do I reliably create a satin finish with an amber shellac?

Thanks in advance for your help! I gave been losing sleep over this! 😩

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Comments (5)

dani_m08
last month
Please pull up the last comment I added on another thread earlier this afternoon. I explained how one year warranties do not cut off your recourse against a contractor/professional I'd rather not repeat the entire comment.

Basically, a one year warranty does not matter. If the floor refinisher is the expert - and should have tested the floor to determine what type of finish was used - then it's on him. I even know how to test wood finishes in order to tell if it's oil vs. poly vs. shellac.

You may have a negligence claim against your floor refinisher - I assume that not determining the type of finish before doing work on the floors (unless removing all of the prior finish) = negligence.

When there is litigation re: something like this, it's rarely based upon a breach of warranty - it's usually a breach of contract or negligence claim - and the one year warranty language in your contract has no bearing on limiting your recourse against your floor refinisher.
littleetoile thanked dani_m08
littleetoile
Original Author
last month
Oh, wow, thank you! This is fascinatng and very helpful, @dani_m08! Just found your comment on the other post.

So sounds like that takes me down the path of legal action, which I'm not ruling out now that I've ready your very useful comment (thank you again!), but unfortunately in the meantime it doesn't address the three things I listed that I'm trying to figure out, so would be great to see if anyone has ideas for those elements! For example, to redo the floors completely would require me moving out of all three floors of my house, which sounds like a nightmare I'd like to avoid if possible! At the very least, would be great to figure out how to repair the worst damaged areas, and match the patches I'm putting in the kitchen.
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cat_ky
last month
You need a flooring person (a reputable knowledgeable one) to match in your floors and make sure its an identical species as to what you have there already and make sure the patches are put in, so they are staggered and not just square type patches.
littleetoile thanked cat_ky
littleetoile
Original Author
last month
@cat_ky I had one room with carpet already ripped out and the flooring replaced by reputable experts. I know the wood type, so thankfully I am covered there, but even the experts weren't able to exactly match the color because at the time I hadn’t figured out that the original floors had amber shellac on them, and that’s what provided the color. Now that I know that, I just need to figure out the answers to the questions I posted here! ^^^
PRO
G & S Floor Service
last month
You can manually scrape the flaking finish off with a plastic scraper. Then do a deep cleaning to remove contaminants before buffing or lightly sanding for a recoat.