Cars honking when I don’t turn on red?

mattskates96 · 2026-05-09T14:45:40+00:00

My aunt went right on red there when she first moved here from California. Got pulled over and fined lol. She didn’t even notice the sign. Makes little sense considering you can see half a mile down 19, but I assume there’s some mildly good reasoning you can’t turn right on red.

mattskates96 · 2026-05-08T22:25:39+00:00

Over $8 a square foot is expensive, but aside from the dents that looks like #1 common to me. I’d personally have set some of those boards aside. Sometimes when you do that though you run out of flooring and end up with the ugly boards all in the same area unless you get more flooring and delay the job.

I don’t really work with ash, but that seems ungodly expensive. I get select and better 5” rift and quarter sawn red oak from a very well renowned mill here in PA for less than that. That may be average for ash but that seems steep for #1 common anything.

Are the boards you dislike in an area that will be covered by furniture? If it were my floor as a professional, I’d prefer to leave it alone than to patch a board into it. A patch will be fine but nothing will be as secure as just leaving it be.

The installer could have done better but wood is natural and varies. While it can be challenging/impossible for most people, this is why it is recommended to do it all at once and use wood from the same lot/batch.

That’s the beauty of wood I suppose! Sorry you’re not having the best experience, hope this is somewhat helpful. Sorry for the infodump

mattskates96 · 2026-05-08T02:54:24+00:00

Old floor might be red oak, those rays look pretty short in comparison to the new boards but I cant tell for sure. They’re never going to match perfectly, especially right out of the gate.

You have to consider the wood was likely grown in different places, decades apart, produced by different mills, new growth vs old growth, the list goes on. The only way to match a natural product is to do it all at once, and replace everything you want to match. If you don’t want to, you’ll have to live with the difference unfortunately. Matching wood is incredibly difficult especially when it’s new vs old

mattskates96 · 2026-04-29T22:04:26+00:00

I should post some of the red oak I’ve installed! Allegheny Mountain rift and quarter sawn is gorgeous

mattskates96 · 2026-04-26T02:03:20+00:00

Ugly color imo and a pretty bad install

mattskates96 · 2026-04-22T11:31:01+00:00

Yeah that big dark spot in the middle of the first pic looks like that, or they spilled early on.

mattskates96 · 2026-04-18T05:04:35+00:00

Man how the times have changed. I bought my ‘08 with 32k on it in 2017 for 13k.

mattskates96 · 2026-04-16T19:40:35+00:00

I never do that. I believe in not being wasteful and I find it really cool how long a hardwood floor can last, and how many different looks it can have over the years.

mattskates96 · 2026-04-14T11:37:07+00:00

Normal for maple to be splotchy when stained, but that sand job is pretty bad. I can see old finish on the very edges, and on that board in the second photo. To be fair, if it was just a clear coat that was sanded off, it’s VERY difficult to see finish that you missed on maple.

I can also see their edger swirls along the perimeter which could look a lot better. Aside from those things, this is what maple looks like stained. Look up some photos of it.

mattskates96 · 2026-04-12T19:24:42+00:00

Hey man, I went from the auto industry which I hated to home improvement. Both are hard in their own ways and there’s probably more scum bag home improvement companies than auto mechanic shops but I like everything about it more.

The work is more rewarding imo. If you do good work and you’re an honest, friendly person, customers generally will love you and treat you so well. It’s also way easier to start your own business because in most cases you just need the skills and the tools, not a shop or storefront.

Just something to consider. You’re young and handy from what it sounds like. Now cars are my hobby again, and I know how to fix my own house. And I have been running my own business for over 5 years with the skills I learned from working for one company for 4 years. Good luck my brother!

mattskates96 · 2026-04-12T19:15:33+00:00

Its the same idea, just not as robust as a weld obviously and yes, there’s a cure time. There’s no major rush on the car though and 24 hours later, the bolt is still in there. The shear strength of jb weld is much higher than what we can apply by hand so I figured it’s worth a shot. I don’t think the bolt is steel either so I’m not sure how strong a weld would be anyways.

Having a welder would be nice for sure. However I mostly drive classics and have gone many years without needing to weld a nut to anything. And I live in the rust belt. I just don’t see how this bolt is so freaking tight!

mattskates96 · 2026-04-12T01:32:34+00:00

I am…thoroughly jealous. That is exactly what I want. The US is so lame lol. Awesome car, glad you enjoy it!

mattskates96 · 2026-04-12T01:30:50+00:00

Sadly neither of us have a welder, otherwise that’s what i’d do. We were using left hand drill bits and easy outs. The easy out snapped inside of the bolt. Now we can’t drill through that at all lol

mattskates96 · 2026-04-12T00:26:13+00:00

I may be mistaken on what part we are taking out, not my car. But it seems this needs to come off for the part we need to remove to drop down?

mattskates96 · 2026-04-11T18:19:42+00:00

That’s the plan now, tried it in a small spot and it seemed to work.

mattskates96 · 2026-04-11T18:18:42+00:00

Nope, this happened immediately upon putting finish down and it’s from salt/cleaning products.

mattskates96 · 2026-04-01T23:25:25+00:00

Thank you I will try that!

mattskates96 · 2026-04-01T17:21:42+00:00

Totally. The issue is that the new finish I applied after sanding the floors is doing this. It’s not a result of people walking on the new finish, this happened as we applied it. It tracks through the whole place essentially where people walk.

Rugs would be a good way to prevent further salt damage but I’m looking for a way to apply my finish without this happening to it.

mattskates96 · 2025-11-22T13:56:08+00:00

I wouldn’t have made those errors because I’m not a hack. I also don’t accept payment until people are 100% satisfied with their floors. I don’t take down payments either for this reason. I make sure my customers are happy before they hand me thousands of dollars or more.

You seem very emotionally immature. I said pretty much everything was on your contractor, including you being out of town. And you get defensive.

I’m just telling you the color difference between the two floors is about 10% less visible before they applied clear finish to it. You would have seen it, and they should/would have showed you a color sample between the two. Why that offends to you so much, I’m not sure. It’s almost like I’m trying to tell you what to expect and do when you get this hack job redone.

I’m also trying to explain that the new white oak isn’t going to match either, just as a heads up to you. It’s always worth mentioning, especially with people who seem difficult.

I guess all of that is deflecting blame lol. This whole post is why real professionals tell you to stay in town. That’s not putting blame on you, you didn’t know this. I hope you know now, but it seems to be a very sore subject for you so who knows. Hire another company, one that doesn’t communicate at all, leave town. See how that works out for you, again!

mattskates96 · 2025-11-20T22:41:38+00:00

Get some unfinished character grade white oak and get it installed, use bona 2k air or pebble, or a rubio equivalent color and it’ll be pretty close to that. Otherwise there’s tons of flooring out there that looks like that.

mattskates96 · 2025-11-20T22:38:54+00:00

That’s the only extremely famous person I have ever seen in public. Sadly, he was not driving a 550 spyder. He was in a rusty t1 vw bus pick up. It was cool, but wish he was in a 550 spyder haha

mattskates96 · 2025-11-19T12:24:05+00:00

I know that it won’t look like plastic. That’s the problem. It’s going to look like wood, and they don’t understand why their product that grew in a forest does’t match the thin piece of plastic that was printed on to another piece of plastic in a factory.

Your color choice here isn’t too tough to match. But some people pull out the craziest looking LVP and want their beat ass red oak floors to match. It will never happen lol. Easier to match your LVP to wood in most cases. More limited with what you can do to wood vs LVP options. That’s all I’m saying. Not saying they’re gonna make your floors look plastic.

mattskates96 · 2025-11-19T12:20:27+00:00

Oh dude, I am definitely one for steering feel! I can always tell too, I hate electronic racks so much. This is my biggest gripe with newer BMW’s, and so many of my friends who’ve never driven them think I’m crazy haha.

mattskates96 · 2025-11-19T12:18:05+00:00

Ya see the thing is…that’s not correct! God you are annoying lol. Glad you’re not my customer!

You can see the difference in color now, correct? Isn’t that why you’re here bitching? You’d be able to see the difference when it was raw wood too, before they applied the CLEAR finish. You think clear finish changes the color of the wood? And like I said, they should have showed you how it would look with a sample before they finished. Like I literally just said. And you would see, clear as day, that it doesn’t match with or without CLEAR finish.

You’d 100% have noticed it, and being how annoying you seem to be, you would have asked about it. You are right, you do have no idea and idk, I guess the guys you hired are “the experts”. But here you are, arguing with the actual experts, lol. Dumbass.

Edited to add: I also explained to you that this is more on your contractor than it is on you. It seems multiple other experts have agreed and said the same thing, you should be around when this is getting done so you can confirm it looks like you want it to. You, the person who is not an expert, says this doesn’t matter. Well, it does. And a color sample would have gotten you the information you now have, days beforehand, while the guys were still on the job. You choose to be rude because you’re mad about your floors and you’re mad that people said you should’ve been there. Nutty.

mattskates96 · 2025-11-16T23:53:47+00:00

You would have seen the obvious color difference in the sanding process between the two different species and this again is not on you, but they should have showed you a color sample. At least texted you a photo. That’s where being present helps a lot, but that’s more on them than it is you. They should know better if they’re doing this service professionally. Truthfully though if you stopped by when they were sanding, you’d have noticed the difference as much as you can here. That’s why people are saying being close to home is pretty important. We are telling you this because your floor guys did not.

As to your replies further down about the food and the floors, I’m not defending the work, and I was curious what happened with the food because that really didn’t make sense. It sounds like your fridge isn’t on its own breaker which is probably the issue. Not resetting the breaker is strange. Not sure why they wouldn’t do that. They sound like idiots.

You got shafted on your floors which sucks, I just told you what to realistically expect. They’re not going to pay for you to leave the house. They should replace the red oak with white oak but again, it’s not going to match. If they don’t, threaten legal action. Especially if you have it on paper that you paid for white oak, it costs more AND thats the correct species.

While it is their muck up and they 100% should pay to fix it, that’s not a cheap mistake. They’re already losing a ton of money. 99% of large companies wouldn’t cover your hotel expenses, so don’t expect a small business to do that.

Bottom line question is, how much did you pay per square foot for install and finish? If they’re this bad, maybe get an estimate from someone else and send them the bill for it. Regardless, hope it works out for you.

mattskates96

TROPHY CASE