Kadee’s hardwood floor blog
Lots of great info to help you refinish your hardwood floors.
Can I save this wood floor?
Should I stay or should I go? (A bit vague, but a nice Clash reference.) If you don't sand floors every day, it's hard to tell by looking if your particular floor is even worth sanding. But you are smart to ask that question BEFORE you start sanding. Almost every...
A Waterlox learning experience started as a mystery
We thought we liked Waterlox before, but now we are absolutely sure. It started as a Waterlox mystery... A customer stopped at the counter to discuss his concerns with his Waterlox finish. He explained that even nine months after application, it was still acting...
Kadee’s Wall of Shame
You don’t want to end up on Kadee’s Wall of Shame. We have seen everything done to floors. This photo gallery includes just some of the heartbreaking things we have seen since 1998— pet stains, water damage, adhesive covered floors, staining horrors, bad screen and...
How to determine your grit sequence
Did you know that refinishing a floor means that you’ll sand over your floor multiple times? Some first-time sanders believe that they’ll just use one grit of sandpaper and sand over their floors one time and, voila!, the floors will be clean, flat and smooth. But...
We take care of the equipment you rent.
Here at Pete's we take care of the equipment you rent. Even when it's heckin' -15ºF outside in Minnesota, 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...
How do I ‘water-pop’ my hardwood floor?
What Does “Water-Popping” Mean?Yes, we should explain. Waterpopping is deliberately and evenly wetting wood with water and allowing it to dry. This causes the grain to raise, making the wood feel rough, but also making it more absorbent. This allows stain colors to...
How do I remove all this icky adhesive from my floor?
Q. Is there an easy way to remove this layer of black stuff on my hardwood floor?
A call to Pete’s Help Hotline fixed this plaid hardwood floor
Where do you get your wood floor advice? And how do you know you are renting a quality sander? A DIYer named Tim 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...
Did your finish melt and clog up the sandpaper?
Even floors that look perfectly normal can be hiding a finish that will melt and clog up sandpaper. If your sandpaper clogged with hardwood floor finish, it isn’t a problem; it’s a solution! If this happens to you, drop to a coarser grit, which holds more melty...
A very bossy article about using woodfiller on hardwood floors
Where do you get your wood floor advice? And how do you know you are renting a quality sander? A DIYer named Tim trusted his local general rental store to guide him. He bought a $25 consult session on Pete’s Hardwood Floors Help Hotline and we talked him through how to fix his 'plaid' floor from their defective sander. Lesson learned.
Radiator edgers are your friends
We can't tell how many people just tell us they are going to hand-scrape the finish from under their radiators. Keep in mind that here in the Twin Cities, we see 1920s era radiators that can be eight feet long!