Our floor refinishing was an experiment that didn't fully succeed. The sanding went ok, although we didn't get a fully flat and even surface because parts of the floor were already too uneven from previous sandings or other things, plus I'm no expert drum sander. (That machine is the real monster sander. Leave it in one place for 5 seconds and you'll have a nice little groove in your floor. Not good.) But we did get a nice smooth finish on the wood, I thought. Then we swept, vacuumed, and tacked the floor using mineral spirits to get all the sawdust off and leave a nice smooth, clean surface for finishing. Then we waited about 12 hours and put on the first layer of finish. For the finish we used a product called Hillyard Uphold b/c experienced floor refinishers recommended it as especially good. It cost nearly three times what standard polyurethane costs, so we figured it must be good, right? I'm sure the product is fine, but for some reason, after four coats we still didn't have a smooth floor. It seems that the first coat raised the grain of the wood, making the floor very rough. Each subsequent coat of finish smoothed things out a bit, but it's still far from how it should be. We were in a hurry to get moved in so we just decided to leave it for now and deal with it later.
So what did we do wrong? Why did the first coat of finish raise the grain of the wood? Did we put it on too thick, or should we have done something different?
