I have put down Pre-finished Durawood Cherry flooring. Is it possible or advisable to put down polyurethane on top to protect from high traffic and wet paws from the dog? If so which product(s) would be best?

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this has been covered already.

Warren

Why did you pay the extra costs for the prefinished wood, if you wish to void the manufacturers finish warranties by applying more finish to the top of it?

The only way I would refinish it is to sand it all off and apply my finish, and not just a top coat.

It can be done but Perry is right it will void any warrenty involved. Call LL and see what they reccomend for recoats. The only way I know to keep dog scratches at bay is to keep them off the floor, I have seen 15 lb dogs scratch the daylights out of floor finish if they are active enough and hadnt had their nails clipped.

I will take your advise and just keep the dog's nails short. He really is not to hard on the flooring unless he gets scared and does a Scooby-Doo manuever.

Warren

You can always do a pad and recoat with Bona Traffic. Traffic is the most durable finish out there hands down.

My understanding is the prefinished is harder than any site finish possible - so you would be protecting the finish with somthing softer that would show more wear...

Let the finish do its job, and if someday it is too worn for your preferences, have someone do a screen and coat at that time

While as a rule of thumb true, there are exceptions to this. There are new classes of on site finishes that include Aluminum Oxide into the product. For a majority of pre-finish floors this is the main strengthening ingredient. To keep it simple, AO powder added to urethane creates something similar to a thin film of aluminum over the wood.

Some finishers purchase the AO separately and add it directly to a urethane product, further some use Boron powder which is stronger but can only be used on darker woods. Yet others will not touch it as it creates a haze over the wood (pre-finished suffers this fate as well). Durability or beauty it seems like those are always the tradeoffs.

The difficult one to match on a site job is impregnating the wood with acrylic. This must be done at the factory, but it is not a finish rather a strengthener. This is a process where the cells of the wood are filled with acrylic resin through the application of heat and pressure. This makes the wood more stable as well as harder. The drawback to this is that most woods that are acrylic impregnated are significantly more expensive that regular pre-finish or unfinished boards. As well Acrylic Impregnated boards can be purchased in unfinished for on-site finish application.

The main point that I am trying to make is don’t let durability sway you from an on-site finish if that is the look you are trying to achieve. Durability can be built into a site finished job.

Well said, kls. And I would add that proper maintainence goes along way in how well a floor holds up. I've seen factory finished floors look pretty shabby in a matter of a few years and some of my finish n place floors looking good ten+ yrs. later. Just my 2 cents.

I am in the same position. Within days of installation, my 30 lb. wheaten terrier has scratched the floor. We lived in a house with conventional on-site finished floors with the same dog and no problem! I think the Bellawood finish must be inferior based on my experience. I emailed LL and got an answer that consisted mostly of sections of the Hardwoodinsatller.com's webiste cut and pasted into the email - the section that mentions using Basic Coating's Tycote. But I don't want a cosmetic fix for the scratches, I really want to add another layer of urethane to the floor so its not so easily scratch by my dog. I'm a DIYer so any suggestions about how to screen and what products to use to add another layer of protection to this floor? I'm not worried about voiding the warrantee. LL response on the phone and via email has been so poor, I never really believed the 50 year warrantee anyway. I'm sure after reading all the fine-print,legalese the warantee would not amount to much. All I can say is that obviously Bob Vila does not own a dog!