I'm no expert, but I believe when re-staining a hard wood floor you
needed
to have completely removed all old varnishes, etc. As you stated, where
the
wood was bare it has dried. That's the secret. You need to get all of
that
off the floor, then buff or sand it good, then stain and later varnish if
desired.

This is not practical though, there would be far too much dust
and general upheaval and I simply don't have time.


"Never time to do it right, but always time to do it over."

I was also hoping to have a floor done my Christmas - my bathroom floor.
When we took up the toilet part of the sub-floor and the plumbing under the
toilet was toast. There wasn't enough to even add a flange repair kit to.
We probably could have jury-rigged something to get us by, but instead we
opted to fix it all correctly. However, this is all taking time, and as a
result, not only will I not have a floor by Christmas, there won't be any
toilet in there either, because we're not reinstalling the toilet until the
new floor is down. And working all day between when we found this and
Christmas eve really cuts down our home repair time. Thank goodness for
multi-bathroom homes and porta-potties.

LB