Refinishing Hardwood Floors

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I just purchased a house that’s about 60 years old and is in very good condition for its age but there’s a number of upgrades and improvements I want to make before I move in.

One of my first projects is to re-finish the hardwood on the ground floor. The wood is 3/8" profile honey-maple and, from what I can see after pulling up a few corners of the carpet, it is in good to very good condition.

One problem is that the underpad is both crumbling and sticking to the floor. It doesn’t appear to be glued, though, and can easily be scraped up with my fingers. Does anybody have any ideas how to scrape all of this up without doing any damage to the wood? One friend suggested using a plastic ice-scraper but I thought I’d solicit other opinions, as well.

Also, if anybody has any general tips for sanding, treating the wood, etc. I’d love to hear them.

2

are you gong to refinish it yourself? Why not let the refinishing company take care of it. The sanders that they use will take a micro-thin layer off the floor, and probably anything else like that pad too.

3

Unless you plan to merely roughen the surface and apply a new protective layer, Enright3 is on the money. DO NOT rent floor sanding equipment and attempt to do the job yourself unless you have some experience. That’s a good way to really eff up your floor.

4

That’s exactly right. Our floor was in HORRIBLE condition, the worst of it being in our front entryway, where someone had stuck linoleum tile directly on the wood with adhesive. We chipped off the tile, but the adhesive was so thick that we could hardly see the wood. We got a guy in to sand the floor, and he just sanded up the leftover adhesive right with it. Looks great now! But I, too, recommend getting someone to do it for you…you don’t want to risk doing damage to the floor.

5

I’ll agree with the other posters, this is not a DIY job. Sanders are a PAIN to work with and it’s really easy to ruin a floor with just a tiny flick of a wrist.

Typically a flooring co. will remove the quarter round or base shoe and reinstall it after refinishing. If your shoe is particularly nice stained wood or an unusual profile, you might want to bring that up when they quote it so they make sure to be extra careful. If it’s painted you are much better off just ripping it out and putting in new.

6

Hmmm, that’s 4 votes against and none for the DIY approach. That’s a lot more lopsided than I’d hoped, given that I’ve already spent more than I budgeted for upgrading the electrical. I thought that this might be an area where I could make up for those extra expenses.

As a point of interest, my brother offered to help me since he and his wife recently re-finished their entire loft and it came out looking very nice. However, it took them several months and they managed to wear a noticeable groove in their bedroom trying to remove a water stain left by the previous owners.

Maybe I’ll get some quotes to see if the savings are worth any potential damage to the floor. Anybody, have any wild, ballpark guesstimates on reasonable prices to re-finish? It’s about 380 sq.ft. plus one staircase. There’s no quarter round so new stuff will have to be added. I’m quite confident I can at least handle that aspect.

How about aesthetic preferences, for colour/stain. Dark, light or natural?

7

My husband and I refinished the floors in our living room and hall when we bought our house 10 years ago. The floors were heavily stained by who knows how many years of renters–I know the people who rented before we bought had huge dogs, and based on the sights and smells of the under carpeting, I’m guessing there were plenty o’ accidents.

The cost of doing it ourselves was reasonable if you look at it solely in terms of dollars and cents. And it wasn’t that difficult to do, but it was incredibly time-consuming. When we were talking about it with a worker at Lowe’s, he told us that we had to sand until we were ready to give up, and at that point we were nearly there. He was right on the mark.

Would I do it again? Not on your life. I’ll save up until I can hire someone. The investment in time was way out of proportion to the savings in cost over hiring someone else.

8

After Sanding put clear coat poly on it, that will look wonderful, it will slightly darken the color but really bring out the beauty in the individual pieces of wood. I would recommend not staining it a color. People forget how beautiful it will look O’Naturale.

9

Amen to that. We once refinished a single front bedroom in an old house we used to own, and hindsight being 20/20, if we’d had the money, we would definitely have paid someone else to do it, not least because we ran out of polyurethane varnish 2/3 of the way through, and the stuff that the Better Half brought back from the DIY place we belatedly realized–after the job was done–was satin finish, whereas the rest of the room was gloss. Oopsie. :rolleyes:

But you can do it yourself; it wasn’t one of those “purely hellacious” tasks, just more work than we had in mind for someone doing it on his single day off every week.

When we pulled up carpet in this house we live in now, we found that the 20-year-old backing had bonded itself to the wood floors. A metal pancake turner and a putty knife did a pretty good job of removing about half of the looser black gunk, but the rest of it, that was truly glued on there, would require sanding to get off.

If we were interested.
Which we aren’t.

10

I did it myself. But I rented a flat orbital sander, not a drum sander. The drum sanders can rip the heck out of your floors. My floors had always been carpeted, and were in great condition. All I needed to do was remove the existing 50 year old varnish and stains.

To get started, remove the quarter round and use a palm sander to work the edges. Keep in mind that the orbital sander doesn’t go down to bare wood as much as the drum sander. Remove the varnish and blemishes, and that’s about it. One giant pain in the ass is that carpeters have to use staples all over the place, so there will be little black specks where those were. Consider them character, or hire a professional with a drum sander. Those are the two choices.

Removing the various left over staple bits is real fun too. I would suggest a channel wrench. Grip the staple, and roll the round top part of the wrench over. That will get most of them. But there will still be annoying remnants that you have to dig out. A box cutter and a tiny wire snip were my tools of choice for that. I ended up using some wood putty for a couple of the bigger pits left behind. I can’t see those at all. Be sure to do this well ahead of the rental though so the putty dries. Or better yet, don’t schedule the sander rental until you know you are ready. That’ll give you some time to walk around the room in wool socks and discover the staple bits you missed.

Rent the sander from a place with a good return policy. Buy a ton more sandpaper than you think you’ll need. The final run, a fine mesh sandpaper, goes pretty fast. Buy even more of those.

I rented mine from Home Depot. I don’t think the specialty rental places have much of a return policy for the paper. Since you’ll have to be back to return the thing, it isn’t an extra trip to return the unused paper.

There are two types of finish poly, water based and oil. The water based smells less and dries faster. But the oil gives a much richer look that I really wish I would have gone with. VENTILATE! The stuff stinks to high heaven, and more than a few people have died while finishing their floors due to lack of Oxygen. Plus, having the fans blowing helps dry faster between coats, so the benefit is twofold. You’ll want at least five coats.

And I wouldn’t use stain.

11

I’ll second that! At least 5 coats. I think we put sevon on our dining room. I wish I had that flat orbital sander though…I used a hand sander around the entire dining room and into the foyer. Yuck!
Also, buy a bottle of Liquid Gold

Stay clear of the waxy stuff…unless you are doing a room that will have zero foot traffic in it. Even then…stick with the non-wax finishes…

12

First, are you sure it’s 3/8"?? I’m not sure you can sand one that thin.

From personal experience, I heartily recommend doing as much work as possible before you move in. Living around remodeling is hell-on-earth. Floors especially - they’ll turn out much better done all in one go, but it’s difficult to not walk on floors when you live there. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think you could probably scrape up the old pad. You might try to think of something larger than an ice-scraper though. :eek: There’s a good chance that the floor underneath will need some work, but not necessarily heavy sanding.

If the floor is in good shape, I’d consider doing a strip and refinish - there’s not nearly as much concern about accidental damage. You can strip a floor just like you do furniture (i.e., stripping chemicals and lots of elbow-grease). It won’t take out all the signs of age and wear, but that’s part of the charm IMO. First you’d need to figure out what the current finish is, to know how to best remove it. At any rate, you’d only sand as much as you would for any other refinishing. An orbital sander would work great for this, I’d think.

If the floor is really rough, it needs to be sanded. Sanding will take a fair bit off the top and remove rough spots, many stains, etc. As you noted, sometimes a stain or something just won’t come out. Give up and call it ‘character’, or you’ll wreck the floor.

DIY floor refinish is a hellacious amount of work, and you can truly muck your floor with the sander if you’re not careful. Also, the sanding machines you rent are often in less-than-optimal condition, making it even easier to divot the floor.

The finish part is definitely DIY territory, if you’re fairly handy. A lot of work, but feasible.

I’d check with the pros first. Tell them you’re overbudget. Ask about stripping rather than sanding. They will want to sand - it’s a lot quicker and more cost-effective for them - but they should be able to tell you what the finish is, how hard it would be to remove, etc. Ask about orbital vs. drum, how many passes it would need, etc. (This should give you a good idea of how much sanding the floor needs.) A good contractor will work with you - the contractor we hired to sand floors gave us all kinds of advice on doing the finish work. Once you’ve gotten a few professional opinions, you’ll have a much better idea of which way to go.

The first floors I worked on, we hired just the sanding done. We did all the rest of it ourselves. That included staining the floor in one room (too many dark stains to leave natural) plus three coats of sealer (kitchen floor* - I wanted that puppy SEALED), then no stain and two coats of poly on the rest of the house. Probably about 1000 sq ft total.

You’re talking hands-and-knees to put down the polyurethane, attempting to keep it even, without brush strokes, etc. Then ditto to hand-sand the finish. Then again to vacuum up every speck of dust. Repeat for as many coats as you can take. It didn’t help that we were working in a house with no central HVAC, but had to keep the windows closed to keep (most) of the bugs and dirt out of the floor. (Don’t do that - we were young and stupid. I’m surprised none of us passed out.)

We’ve also done the entire upstairs of the new house (approx 1000 sq ft) plus a friend’s living room (appx 400 sq ft) in the last few years, including the sanding. It can be done if you’re very, very careful. We are fairly handy types (one professional remodeler - who does NOT do the floors in his remodels, one experienced amateur remodeler, plus a couple of us who are fairly familiar with tools).

So get some professional opinions, then decide how risky it would be to do it yourself, then decide if the cost + risk is worth it.

Good luck!

*I had more arguments with people over a wood kitchen floor. The floor was in great shape, just stained, but everyone and I mean EVERYONE I knew insisted that you just COULDN’T have a wood floor in the kitchen. Nowadays, twenty years later, everyone is doing it. Grrr.

13

If you must do this yourself, please wear a decent face mask while sanding. The ER bill would likely be more than having the flooring pros do it. And open every window you have when putting down the poly.

I prefer clear satin poly, myself.
I would never do the floors myself–I have refinished furniture and woodwork, but not floors. If you can, pay someone to do the floors, and save money on painting the ceilings and walls yourself. Wallpaper is also fairly easy (simple patterns). You might want to paint the walls/ceiling first and then sand the floors. Just a thought.

We want before and after pics!

14

We are in the middle of this. Get used to a life covered in dust. We had a mishap with stain and I wouldn’t recommend it, as it didn’t come out evenly and we had to take it off. Go natural. From the research we’ve done, semi-gloss poly is the way to go for high traffic areas.

15

Whew! Thanks for all the comments everyone, esp. NurseCarmen and redtail23 for the detailed descriptions.

A few comments: I just got back from the house where I pulled up more carpet and the cold air return gratings in order to check the floor condition and thickness. It’s definitely 3/8", which would have me worried except the surface appears to be practically pristine. It’s my understanding that this floor was carpeted pretty much from day one so I may be able to get away with a few light sandings by an orbital sander.

That said, I think I’ll leave it up to the professionals. I knew this work would be labour intensive but I didn’t realize just how much. It’s just me and I have a full-time job and a possible freelance contract coming up so I’m afraid I’d still be working on this thing come January.

16

I want to chime in as another person who says hire professionals. I’m so glad I did, they look amazing and I never would have been able to do it myself. Plus if you screw it up, it will either cost more to get fixed, or be a constant irritant everytime you look at the floor.

17

Didn’t catch it in the OP, but if you’re certain the flooring is 3/8", refinishing options may be limited. Let the contractor you’re hiring verify that the flooring isn’t veneer, which is typical for the 3/8" floors I’ve seen. There’s no margin for oops when sanding with veneer.

18

Yes, definitely 3/8", but not veneer. It’s solid all the way through. The house was built in 1949 and the floors are original. I’ve been told that this was common for that era.

19

Yes, I’d say definitely go pro with 3/8" wood. There’s no room for error there.

Unless it will totally mismatch the rest of the house, I’d go natural, especially since it’s in really good shape. Natural floors are just gorgeous.

Good luck with your new house! It will drive you crazy for the next while, but it’s worth it once it’s all done.

20

My wife and I bought a house last year, and it is also around 60 years old. We pulled up all of the carpet and found hard wood in every room of the house. It sounds like we have floors very similar to yours. We talked to several professional companies about refinishing our floors, but we decided that we could do it ourselves for considerably less money. Worst case, we could always go back to our original plan of putting in new carpet.

For most of the sanding, we used a square buff sander. We started with a very rough grit sandpaper, and gradually moved to finer and finer sandpaper. This took longer than using a drum sander would have, but it was also a much more controlled sanding process. We didn’t have to worry about taking off too much wood in one pass, which was one of our biggest concerns on such old floors. We used the previously mentioned orbit sander to go around the baseboards and other areas that we couldn’t get to with the buff sander.

It took almost an entire day to sand three bedrooms, a hallway, and the living room. Some of the rooms were in pretty bad shape. It looked like the previous owners of the house had refinished and painted their ceiling in the master bedroom right on top of the hardwood without a drop cloth. I will post some before and after pics so you can see the progress.

Before:

Front Door
Living Room
Another Living Room Shot
Leaving the living room
Guest Room
Guest Room 2

And finally…

Master Bedroom
Master Bedroom 2
Master bedroom 3

During:

Sanding
Sanding 2
First sanding of master bedroom
Applying the first coat of polyurethane
Watching the first coat of polyurethane dry

After:

After one coat of polyurethane in the living room
After one coat of polyurethane in the guest room

After each coat of polyurethane, we sanded the floors with a fine wire screen, swept up the dust, and wiped everything down with a damp cloth. When the floors dried again, we would apply another coat of poly.

We ended up applying a total of four coats of a water based polyurethane throughout the entire house. At first we were concerned about using the water based poly instead of the oil based poly, but the fellow at Lowes said that it was just as durable. Also, each coat dried in only a couple of hours which allowed us to finish the floors in less time. My wife and I own two dogs, and I can tell you that the floors have held up VERY well over the last year even with dogs running around all of the time like a bunch of idiots.

I had hoped that I had pictures after all four coats of poly, but it doesn’t look like I have any available to post right now. All in all, I am very glad that we decided to refinish the floors ourselves. It took a fair amount of work, but in the end we saved a lot of money and had something to really be proud of in our “new” house.