So I just bought a house (woohoo!) and there are a couple of rooms that have what appear to have hardwood under the carpet that I’d like to refinish. Unfortunately, there is at least one spot, in each room, where the wood is so damaged it definitely needs to be replaced.
So, I guess my question is how do I find out what kind of wood is there so I can replace it with the same kind? Do I need to cut out a good section and bring it somewhere or is there another way? Can you get wood samples (like paint samples)?
PC
The place in which the house was built and accurate dating can help narrow the search regarding species of wood flooring. The snaps you’ve linked to indicate paint on the flooring such that you might want to contact a flooring refinisher for a quote on sanding and refinishing. Any tradesman worth his salt should be able to identify the flooring product used. Not that you’re incompetent, but floor refinishing is not a job for a n00b. A drum sander in the hands of an untrained person can take a floor that needs to be refinished and turn it into a floor that needs to be replaced in a heartbeat. Just suggesting that you don’t want to let the DIY spirit take you into shark-infested water. 
I’m not a contractor, either, but it doesn’t look like to me that the wood needs to actually be replaced. It just needs to be refinished, like danceswithcats said.
That one place where there’s a hole might be able to be patched. In that case, you wouldn’t necessicarily need to match the wood exactly, since you’ll be refinishing the entire floor anyway, and new stain would make it blend in so no one would ever notice.
I’d call in a couple of professionals and get a few estimates. Some of the work you may be able to do yourself-- just have the professional do what you can’t and save a litte money.
It might be pricey-- that’s wht a lot of hardwood was covered up in the first place. People didn’t want to pay what it would take to fix it properly.
Call a pro. A good one would probably just pop out one of the boards or tell you what type of wood & plank to buy with little or no charge. If they do, try to shoot some business their way in the future. Or hire them, and let them have the headache.
It’s all but certain that someone competent to give you an estimate on the refinish job will in the process tell you what wood you are dealing with.
I’m going to take a shot here. It looks like the floor in my house, which is a Craftsman style from 1929. I think you have birch floors. People don’t usually think of birch as a hardwood, but it is. In fact many gymnasium floors are birch. I had my downstairs refinished about six years ago, putting a polyurethane semi-gloss on top. I had to patch a number of spots where there had been passive heat vents. I was lucky enough to have a friend who had a bunch of hardwood salvaged from an old high school gym that was the right size and color. I would be happy to talk with you, or email, about how to approach the patch jobs, though it doesn’t look to me like you have real big troubles in that department.
I decided to do the upstairs myself. I rented the equipment, and put a spar varnish finish on instead of the poly. I have opinions about both finishes, again which I would be happy to talk about in more detail than here. One thing I would say is that you have to remember it’s a floor, and you shouldn’t allow yourself to get too caught up in the idea that it has to be perfect. A floor with nail holes and scratches has character. Sometimes I wish I had just thoroughly cleaned that downstairs first, and used Murphy’s oil soap to remove the paint spots, and then lived with it a while before jumping right into a poly finish.
Well…, not exactly…
Different woods take the stains differently. Woods have a base colour to them which affects the final colour of the stained product. Even among peices of the same type of wood, one can run into differences. On cabinets, for instance, I often have to either bleach a darker peice of wood to get it closer to matching all the rest before staining, or I have to tone in an area which was lighter after the staining.
Plus, the different woods have varying grain patterns and sizes which can really stand out after finishing.
Like Dances said, any competant craftsman can usually tel what kind of wood it is upon inspection, but simply using any old peice and hoping it won’t stand out isn’t a good idea in my book.
As others have mentioned, floor refinishing is an art where experience really counts. Still, it can be done. Most rental companies rent the equipment (drum sander and edge sander). The main trick to learn is to make certain the drum sander is in motion whenever you make or break sanding contact with the floor.
I’d still get a quote because it’s a big job and very visible. You might be able to get someone to sand the floor and you do the staining and finishing.
A local hardwood dealer will have samples and you might be able to find something similar (remove one of the bad boards to take with you). There are multiple grades of various wood species and that doesn’t make things easier. Patches are made by removing the bad boards (usually by drilling and then breaking them up) and then carefully fitting in new boards. Most wood flooring is tongue and groove and you have to trim off part of the groove to refit the new boards. Another challenge is matching board dimensions.
NoClueBoy is exactly right about staining. I’ve patched floors using wood set aside from the original job and not have it match because the original floor had faded. Be prepared to do selective staining and lightening if you want a good match.
Wow. Thanks for the replies. As it happens, I’d been asking around for floor installers and one contacted me and came by today. He said the paint (The white corner of which you can see in the pictures) has stained the wood too deeply to be removed and he recommended installing a new floor over the old one (and patching the holes with plywood or whatever). He also informed me that the wood was Fir, a softwood, which I’d also not heard of as flooring (which isn’t saying much).
He’s going to get back to me with an estimate.
I’m tempted to see if I can remove the paint with some strong stain/paint remover and then try refinnishing if it works. I’m also tempted to lay my own laminate or engineered wood floor. Unfortunately, this is the kind of project that I get myself into without really knowing how well I’ll do (sometimes, surprisingly, I don’t totally mess up, which only gives me the confidence to keep going even after I do mess up).
If you saw the pictures, you also saw the separation between the boards near that corner. If I can replace the section and refinnish, is there a patching putty or glue that could fill in the spaces without looking horrible?
PC
P.S.- I don’t suppose anyone knows a reliable professional in the Sacramento, CA?
Oops. Forgot to ask if it’s ok to put laminate on top of the hardwood floor- I know you’re supposed to put a moisture barrier underneath. Is that to prevent moisture from coming up or going down? Would the flooring traped below the layer become moldy from being sealed up like that?
PC
A floor installer recommended installing new floor over the old one? That’s like asking a plastic surgeon if you need plastic surgery, isn’t it?
“Stained the wood too deeply?”
Even if it is fir–which I doubt–you can remove paint if you want to. Try a test section. You’ve got nothing to lose. Murphy’s Oil soap applied full strength can loosen paint, and if that doesn’t work there are strippers that will. (Now there’s an image…) I believe your floors could look fantastic with a little effort.
And let’s say for the sake of argument that it is fir [but it’s not]. Won’t it still look just fine when you put a few coats of finish over it? And when you cover it with a couch, tables, chairs, desks, beds, dressers, bookshelves, plantstands, entertainment centers, piano, and bowflex, how much of the damn thing gets looked at anyway?
Lastly, laminate floors suck. Don’t do it. You have the real thing. Even if you rent the drum sander and do a shitty job and apply too few coats of inferior finish and don’t let it dry properly and don’t match the wood and patch those spots with balsa wood, it will look better, walk better, and cost you less than one room of laminate.
It’s just a floor. You walk on them. Tell the floor installer guy to take a hike, and at least find a hardwood floor refinisher to get a second opinion. Email me.
I agree with Mailman – get another opinion. That whitewash in one room looked like a tough job, but the other rooms looked very refinishable. Get some more pros to take a look.
I’ve tried three types of laminate flooring. The Bruce laminate flooring seems OK but the other two have not held up well over the years. They’re easy to damage and they can do things regular hardwood doesn’t do - like delaminate. They can be installed on top of existing floors but you sometimes have to trim doors, move trim, etc. You can refinish them once or twice (so they say).
Fir flooring isn’t common in most parts of the country but you see them in the northwest. Very soft and easy to damage also but they finish nicely. If you choose to sand your floors, get a piece of plywood and practice some first. Paint is tough to remove but I’d give it a shot anyway. Use cleaner, a brass wire brush, etc.
Another option - if the house if worth it and you want to spend the money - is to remove your present floor and install oak flooring. Floor height remains close to the same, they’re tough, and look great when properly finished.
I just bought a new/old house myself, and one of the prior owners glued carpeting to the oak floors throughout the second floor.
While I agree that using a drum sander is something best left to the pros (having used one in another house, and leaving waves in the floor you could surf on), there are also floor sanders available for rental which are rotary, like a random orbit sander (Varathane ezV sander ) which worked like a charm, and raised minimal dust. Well, it worked where I had removed the adhesive with a stripper, and blew the circuit breaker when I tried to take up the old glue with the sander. But that old glue is much worse than the paint in your pictures.
Rental was about $35 a day, sanding disks about $5 for 3 (it uses three at a time). You can rent them at Home Depot or Ace Hardware. I’d say, if the alternative is to rip up the old floor and replace it, invest $50 or so to see if you can sand the old floor down. Worst case would be you’re out the $50 and have to replace the floor anyway.
Thanks for the advice. I will try to remove the paint and refinish the floors myself. I had realized laminate was so bad. I recently found someone who has a square flat sander that he said was pretty easy to use. Has anyone used that?
I recently came across “glueless hardwood” floors that I think are engineered wood that come in planks that lock together. Have you heard of that?
PC
Poster,
I am a contractor, and I read through all the replies, including Dances W/ cats, who’s opinion I hold in the highest regard.
My opinion (lets stress that it is just that’ not professional advice) The floor was probably carpeted because it was the least costly option.
This could mean:
The wood floor is unreparable
It was cheaper to install carpet and pad than repair
The owner really liked wall to wall and carpeted over a perfectly good wood floor.
You wont know until you inspect the floor
We CAN’T know without seeing it ourselves.
Thanks for the compliment EvilGhandi. 
Some other resources to explore PosterChild:
Chemical strippers such as Peel-Away are capable of removing multiple layers of paint. My Dentist and his wife purchased a 1700s era home that had multiple coats of paint on all of the lovely woodwork, and over several years, they removed the gunk, restoring the wood to it’s original beauty using Peel-Away.
The claim that painted wood can’t be salvaged is hooey. Even with a softwood, the degree of penetration isn’t going to be that deep. Working on a small spot, strip and neutralize following label directions, and then use a quarter sheet RO sander to see if the appearance is acceptable to you. If yes, then go for it, using proper safety precautions as some strippers are nasty.
One other trick when a piece of flooring is beyond salvage from physical damage, insect attack, rot, or pet stain is to steal matching floor of the same age and species from a closet. You then are able to match the area which is quite visible, and effect the less-aesthetically pleasing repair where it will be unnoticed.
I concur w/ dwc’s suggestion to take intact flooring from hidden areas.
If you are dead set on salvageing the floor under the carpet, there is no better scource of replacement material than the floor in the house.
In fact, an experienced flooring contractor could use the flooring from another room to patch and replace any damaged flooring in a room you want.
Just don’t expect it to be cheap.
Oh and as an aside. DWC, I wasn’t complimenting you.
I was just stating that I think you are less full of crap than most of the posters here.
Sounds like effusive praise to me. 
Thanks danceswithcats, I’ll try Peel Away and I like the idea of stealing from the closet.
Thanks
From what I’ve learned of the previous owner and how he handled other projects, I lean toward him just choosing the cheaper alternative (which, I guess, would encompass the first and second choices). I guess I’ll find out. :dubious: