Cat pee stains.

[Jan Smith]

Thanks for the replies, I will talk to the owner tomorrow and see if she wants to do the method Lee posted.

[Tom M King]

Please post the results, with pictures.

[Jan Smith]

It's much different than iron stain. Find pro floor finishing forums, and see what they have to say about pet stains. You can't get them out. You can't stain over them with the darkest stain known to man, and hide them.

Maybe I should get a tape with hardwood flooring printed on it.

[Jan Smith]

Oxalic acid will only lighten it the slightest bit. Wood Bleach about the same. You can't sand it out either. Been there.....

Here is a picture of the worst room. We replaced all of this. There were Many more smaller places in other rooms. The house sold for the land cost. Pro floor finishers had redone all the floors, and the house had been shown over 100 times. This room was after we sanded it.

Wow, fortunately for me we are only talking about a small area, I will tell my customer.

Thank you.

[Tom M King]

Here's how I did the smaller areas. First a router hogged out most of the area, and then trimmed up with a chisel. The end joints don't have to be at the same place as the flooring that's down. Just stagger any new end joints.

This was to let in 1/4" pieces. West Systems epoxy was used to glue the inlays down. After we did all the small areas like that, the whole floor was sanded, and refinished with a natural, clear finish. No one could find the repaired spots.

[Tom M King]

To let in a new piece next to a baseboard, make a gauge so you can get the new piece to finish close to where you want the top surface, so you don't have to do a lot of cutting down of the inlaid piece, since you can't give a router good support all around.

You will find more theorists on internet forums, than you will find people who have actually done something.

[Mark Daily]

Maybe I should get a tape with hardwood flooring printed on it.

Or maybe you can faux paint it to match! Lol

[Jan Smith]

Talked to the customer and I told her what I learned here and she wants to try the barkeepers helper method.
I will take pictures of the process.

Thank you.

[Jan Smith]

So far it goes as most here have predicted.
This is stain one after several days of 3% hydro peroxide and one day of barkeepers helper.
No real change as far as I can tell.
Look almost like Wu-Tang Clang was in da houz.

Sanded the finish off and now its covered with barkeepers helper again plus a rag to keep it moist overnight and if this does not show any improvement by tomorrow I will just refinish it.

2. Stain which is worse.
After several days of 3% hydro peroxide and one night of soaking in of Nature’s Miracle which also more or less did nothing.



Now also covered with a healthy does of the barkeepers helper.

Good thing is that the customer is fine if it is a lost cause, she just wanted me to give it a try.

[John TenEyck]

Barkeepers Helper has a low percentage of oxalic acid. It didn't do much for me to remove an iron stain from oak. Pure oxalic acid took it out completely. You should be able to buy it at your local ACE Hardware.

John

[Mel Fulks]

Or maybe you can faux paint it to match! Lol

I was just checking to see if that had been suggested. We are wood workers with a number of skills. It's likely that only
a few of us have that one. But I think it is the right one for the problem. It's a perfectly good fix used in "the finest museum houses of our finest patriots". I would attempt it ,...to show my wife ...I can't do it. Then hire someone who does
faux finishes.

[Jan Smith]

No real change after two days with Barkeepers Helper.

So while I am at it I will try the pure oxalic acid John recommends.

If that does not work I hope all the different remedies soaked together in the wood will do the trick.😛

[John TenEyck]

Is the finish sanded off on the stained areas? For any liquid treatment to work it has to go onto the bare wood.

John

[Tom M King]

Like I said earlier, been there, tried that, didn't work.

Thanks for posting the pictures, Jan.

[Tom M King]

When I epoxied in the inlays, I first sealed all the edges, since I wasn't sure if penetrating epoxy might be visible after sanding the floor.

For a sealer, I used Bona Naturale. It's an industrial floor finish that, on Oak, you have to examine closely to even tell that anything is on the wood. It will change Pine a little, but not Oak. I used it for the first coat on the floor, and final coats were Bona Traffic HD.

I guess if you only sand small areas, being careful to stop on board edges, you may be able to only finish the repaired areas. Scraping will probably work better than sanding, to stay on a board edge.

The Naturale is only sold in gallons, and the last I bought was something like $115, so you will probably want to use something else to pre-seal the edges.

On that flip house, I burned probably $8000 worth of time trying to find something that would get rid of the stains, with no luck. I tried all the common things, and several others that probably hadn't been tried before. That picture of the room was after sanding, and all sorts of chemical tries. If I had known what to do to start with, I could have saved a week, and a half of time that was wasted.