Update at the Flip House Oct. 30, 2015

Well, unfortunately the hardwood floors aren't finished yet.  I may have run into a little bitty issue.  I need to preface this by saying the previous homeowners apparently had three large dogs that lived in the house, at least according to the neighbor.  Over the course of time, said dogs urinated frequently inside the house and now there are pet stains on the hardwood floors which ruled out refinishing the bedroom floors because they were so trashed. 

When we had a contractor come in to cut and install the countertop for the kitchen he mentioned to me that if it were him he would attempt to refinish the wood floors.  I informed him that there may be some pet urine stains and he said that some times you can get them out with aggressive sanding but a lot of the times you can't, however he felt I should certainly try if the living room and/or dining room were in halfway decent shape, which I felt they were. 

So I sanded the floors to prep them for re-staining yet still there were several dark pet stains in the wood that even though they became significantly lighter, they were still apparent.  I went ahead and stained the floor knowing it wouldn't be perfect but hoped it would be decent at the very least and here's what I was left with:

No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get on board with it.  I even sat on it for a few days (not literally or stain would have been on my hind end) while the stain dried thinking maybe it would wear on me.  NOPE!  I also tried looking at it and squinting because almost anything looks better if you squint.  It still wasn't working for me and that ticked me off because quite frankly I am SO done with this floor.  Not even the handrail I fabricated and installed all by myself caused me this much work and I thought THAT job was bad.

By the time yesterday rolled around I was just so fed up with the whole situation that I stormed out of the house and headed to the nearest hardware store to go pick up a dark wood stain that I felt would actually match the pet stains.  If you can't beat 'em join 'em right?  I bought the darkest one they had and said a little prayer under my breath when I got back to the house because I was "this close" to lighting a match.  Here's what it looks like:



  
There is a pet stain in this little section I stained at the top of the photo.  Can you tell where it is?  I'm about halfway through re-staining the floor and while not every stain is perfectly undetectable, it is 90% better than what it was in the first photo I posted.  Plus the floor in that photo was just so darned red and I thought that was odd because I stained the wood floors in my own house with the same color stain and they did not come out that red.  The little disclaimer on the stain can suggesting that colors may vary even if you stain the same type of wood should be taken into consideration and you should test a little patch first.  However, even though I didn't like the initial color I do like the two colors layered because in my opinion it adds a bit of warmth and keeps the dark brown from being too harsh.

As I said, I am currently halfway done so as soon as I get the stain on the entire floor I will make sure to take photos and post them.  My job won't be over though because then I have to polyurethane as well.  I hope it's worth it when I get it all done though because at this point it would have been a lot quicker if I would have just put down carpeting!