Resurfacing Background
So about a year ago, I resurfaced my entire upstairs by myself. In the process of doing so, I water popped the floors, went with an oil based stain, and a water based poly. I did one coat of stain and 4 coats of poly. After all was done, I was very pleased with my floors so no complaints. I am providing this backstory to aid with any possible solutions to my problem.
Problem
In working on other parts of the house, I accidentally got some paint / grout marks on the floor which would not come off with normal methods of cleaning. I mistakenly used a steam cleaner to which it took off the white marks but also the poly and the stain! 🙁 I know now of course that was a mistake but now I am left with the problem of how to fix the spot without redoing the entire floor again.
What I have tried so far
So far I have done my research on this Stack Exchange as well as forums and such so I taped around the area affected, sanded down to the boards with a fine sand paper, re-waterpopped them (letting it dry overnight like you are supposed to), and then applied stain. I have the same exact stain that I used from when I resurfaced the floors originally so matching up shouldn't be an issue; however, I am having a really hard time matching the patch area to the rest of the room. I can not get it to be dark enough. I have tried multiple coats at 15-20 minutes (highest time on the can says 15) before wiping away but it seems to be making very little if any improvement each cycle.
First time staining after the water popping:
Second time staining on top of previous:
(I tried my best to take the pictures at the same time of day each day so lighting in the room was roughly the same)
Question
So my question is, what else can I do to make the floors darker / match my original better? Is there a better technique than I am using to do patch jobs like this? I have purposely not done a poly coat because I tried all of this once and then applied poly and the poly made very little difference in shade. I want to of course avoid sanding many times so I don't start to create divots in this spot.
Best Answer
You need to treat the touchup in only those three rows affected, working with the grain. You need to sand out, way farther then the affected areas. The area to be repaired will, ideally, be the entire three rows. You should, at least taper the damaged area way way out. Feather it out far, so the stain won't have such a hard line. If that's oil based stain, make sure to wipe the affected area down with paint thinner, really get in there and scrub it out. Keep scrubbing and rinsing until the rag comes up clean.
On the retouchup itself, use a quality china bristle brush, lay the stain on thick. You're just going to have to experiment with how long to let it lay before you wipe it off.
You will always see your repair, for the rest of your life. Your goal needs to be "not as noticeable", rather than "never happened". Sorry about that, but that's the way it is. The job you're tackling is difficult for those of us that do this for a living, let alone someone who does it once or twice in their life.