We have an ~13 year old home. The ground floor is all 2.5" solid strip oak. It is mostly an open floor plan with the kitchen and great room together. The smaller 'living room' originally had carpet and we had it replaced with matching wood seven years ago and therefore saw how that floor was laid and sanded. At the same time, the rest of the floors were power buffed and ALL floors were re-varnished together.

Five years ago, we added six feet on to the kitchen and dining room. I don't recall that we had the entire downstairs re-varnished although I just realized that we needed a small patch on the other side of the room under removed cabinets.

We currently have two areas; the major kitchen work area and by the front door, where the varnish has worn away and I am hoping that I can just re-varnish those areas without covering the whole floor. So the question is, can I just hand buff the worn areas with some of that buffing screen to bring back the natural wood color and varnish and somehow feather it in?