MAKE SURE THEY USE BONA PRODUCTS TO STRIP FLOOR AND STAY OUT OF THE HOUSE FOR 3 DAYS AND ASK THE RE-FINISHER IF HE'S A DRUNK AND GOING TO SHOW FROM 1-3 EVERDAY AND TAKE MONTHS TO DO THE WORK OR WHAT. GET IT IN A CONTRACT IN WRITING AND A PENALTY FOR EVERYDAY THEY ARE LATE GETTING DONE OF ATLEAST $250.00 A DAY

Thanks everyone. That is what I was worried about. I will probably just live with them until I can afford to replace. Although the damage is only in two small places...The rest of the floor is in pretty good shape. Has anyone had good luck with "feathering" in new or salvaged pieces? Also, the house was built in 1910. Is it normal for it to have hardwood AND a subfloor? You can see from the basement that there is a subfloor running diagonal. I can't believe these floors would have been anywhere close to 3/4 of an inch, but I suppose they've been refinished a few times over the past 100 years. I've attached a picture from where I took the cold air return out. Very low traffic area in a corner by the built-ins. There has obviously been a piece of subfloor replaced, but that's where I could get the best picture of the actual floors. Again, thanks everyone! I'm just getting started researching everything and there is SO much conflicting information on the internet!

I don't know what color you should go for with all those different woods in the room, but if you want to go natural I suggest that first you at least wipe down the table with an old white T shirt dampened with mineral spirits (to get any dust off). Really should have used a chemical stripper instead of sanding the finish/stain off. Sand to 220, wipe down with mineral spirits after each change in paper (I don't know what grit DS ended with). Then brush on a couple of coats of thinned (half and half) dewaxed shellac (Sealcoat is good) and denatured alcohol. You can lightly hand-sand with 320 between each coat but I really haven't found it necessary. After a couple (or 3 or 4 - depends on how thickly you're putting it on) you can use a gel stain to adjust the color if needed, then I would put on a couple of coats of gloss poly (sand and wipe between each coat), you can stop with that or top with a lower-sheen. I have only done doors and stairs this way, don't know what in particular you would use on a kitchen table but ask at finishing store, I'd think you'd want food-safe but don't know what brand or line would be best for durability. The shellac really makes the pine almost iridescent - I think you'll like it.

Hi Grad Girl 1. The problem with those pieces, and in general, with most pieces in the particular late-193Os style that's come to be known a 'waterfall', is not that they're veneer per se, but that they're often made of crummy veneer, applied--with glues that haven't held up well--to a crummy framework. Some styles are more prone to shoddy construction than other styles, and this particular style is one of the ones to watch out for. But veneer itself is not bad. High-quality veneered pieces can take refinishing without much problem, if you're careful. I know, because I've had a ton of pieces like that. Here's the thing about veneer: it started out as a way to stretch a given quanity of wood. Back in, say, 1820, a handsome piece of imported mahogany about the size of a fence post could be used as a vertical stile on an American Empire dresser, or as a table leg, or as the carved top crest of a sofa or to make a few rungs on a Grecian style chair. But by cutting that four-inch-thick piece of wood into thin slices only an eighth or a sixteenth of an inch thick, it could provide enough beautiful veneer to cover a more common, less expensive wood--like pine or poplar or oak, depending on where in the country the piece was made--and make an Empire secretary eight feet high, with perfectly matched drawer fronts with lustrous graining. Some of the greatest pieces of furniture ever made are veneered. But veneering is also a cheap way top cover up particle board with a slice of wood so thin you could read through it, which is the way a lot of furniture is made today. The only thing feeping that paper-this "wood" down is a thin layer of polyurethans. That is, plastic. On a piece like that, a gentle sanding can go right through the veneer & expose--well, whatever is under there. One popular manufacturer, having abandoned heavy, expensive-to-ship particle board-based-veneered shelving, is now offering shelves whose core is corrugated cardboard. Sure, it looks nice on the display floor, it's easy to carry out of the store & it's amazingly inexpensive, but nobody will be asking how to refinish that stuff in sixty years because it will have disintegrated long before that. Then again, a lot of people don't really care about that stuff, they just want something cheap. Anyway, somewhere in between the extremes of museum-worthy antique veneered pieces & trendy, here-today-gone-tomorrow pieces, there's plenty of older-but-decent-quality veneered furniture available for not much money, and some of it has your name written all over it. Your job is to find it. But how? The best way to get a fast education in old furniture is to go to a large antique furniture flea market--not to buy, but just to look. There, in one place, in one day, you'll see every style, high & low, every kind of construction, good & bad, solid wood & veneered, and it won't take you long to be able to tell what's what, so that, later, when you have only a photo on Craigslist to go by, you'll already have a pretty good idea of what it's like in real life. Then you'll be better able to gauge prices, not only based on what you can afford, but on what something's actually worth. Have fun on your search. Regards, Magnaverde.