Wood floors

[Meenah]

Please give me any and all advice about wood floors. My house is 75 years old with hardwood floors. I have removed all of the carpeting, and now need to refinish the floors (must do it myself). How hard and involved is it. Jenn P. I know you just helped Sue C. Please advise!!!!!!

We paid to have it done. I would say do it during a time of year when you can open the windows after applying -- we had to wait 24 hours. Those fumes are fierce.

[DCJenn]

This is one of those jobs where OCD can help. You have to sand everybit of floor and then you have to get every bit of sawdust up.

You can rent sanders but you need to practice first because you can really permanently damage your floors. Also, make sure there's enough floor left to sand- they say to stick a penny (I think) in between to boards to check to see how much floor is left. Unfortunately, I don't remember how much you need. Go to http://www.thisoldhouse.com and they have step by step directions.

It's doable but painful.

Jenn

You could have a few people give you a quote to see what they would do. That may be a way to answer Jenn's point about the thickness of the floors.

Are the floors stained and if so do you want to keep the same stain? That factors in to the stuff you put on.

We did the floors in our old house, and then have helped with Sue's floors. If it's at all financially feasible, source it out. It's a HUGE job. MASSIVE. Jenn is right about the sander / control issues. Sue's dad made some interesting swirlies in her floor that will hopefully be hidden by my dining room table. You'll likely need to pull out the quarter round as well, and replace it.

Nellie is also correct about the fumes. It's awful. And depending on what kind of polyurethine you put down, there are mulitple coats involved, each of which are supposed to cure for at least 24 hours before applying the next.

You have to seal off as much of the rest of your house as possible before staining - the dust gets EVERYWHERE. Then once you've swept the dust, shop-vac'ed the dust, dry mopped the dust, you have to get down on the floor with a tack-cloth which is really hard to work with. Then you stain - even application is a MUST. The stain dries quickly, and there's not a lot of backpeddling from errors. Then with the poly.

Truly - if you can swing paying a pro - it will be more than worth it.

[Meenah]

Re: Wood floors

Definitely on the back burner now for outsourcing!!! Thanks!

Re: Wood floors

Get prefinished so you don't have to seal it at home, I have looked at the prices of unfinished wood and it doesn't seem like an awesome deal when you put in the hours and deal with chemical head.

You need to make sure your floors are leveled to do this correctly. We are gonna have to level out a couple of spots to put down wood/or engineered (it's still up for grabs)

Check out if you are a by a http://www.lumberliquidators.com We are, decent prices, may end up buying from there - they have all kinds wood, laminate and bamboo.

Re: Wood floors

Oh and on difficulty: if you have any crown molding/trim you will have to yank it up, lay down the floor then prelace the trim. Depending how thick of flooring you get it could really pull the trim up. We are going to have to cut the trim in the door jams to fit in the flooring, and we may have to cut our doors to fit over the new flooring as well. Our doors are hallow, so if they do have to be cut, and we hit the hallow part, we may have to shell out $500 for new doors.

Just something to think about.

[Tenacious_D]

Re: Wood floors

I can remember my parents sanding the floor in our house when I was in middle school and I honestly thought it was going to be the end of my dad's life (all the dust) and the end of my parents marriage -- all the work and stress wasn't good for them. They swore they would never do it again but the floors did look good. Is it really expensive to outsource?

Re: Wood floors

Oh and on difficulty: if you have any crown molding/trim you will have to yank it up, lay down the floor then prelace the trim. Depending how thick of flooring you get it could really pull the trim up. We are going to have to cut the trim in the door jams to fit in the flooring, and we may have to cut our doors to fit over the new flooring as well. Our doors are hallow, so if they do have to be cut, and we hit the hallow part, we may have to shell out $500 for new doors.

Just something to think about.

she's wanted to refinish existing floors, not lay new floors.

Re: Wood floors

Oh and on difficulty: if you have any crown molding/trim you will have to yank it up, lay down the floor then prelace the trim. Depending how thick of flooring you get it could really pull the trim up. We are going to have to cut the trim in the door jams to fit in the flooring, and we may have to cut our doors to fit over the new flooring as well. Our doors are hallow, so if they do have to be cut, and we hit the hallow part, we may have to shell out $500 for new doors.

Just something to think about.

she's wanted to refinish existing floors, not lay new floors.

Duh - missed that, thanks

[Meenah]

Re: Wood floors

I'm not doing any of it now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks everyone. Maybe next year I can hire someone to do it for me!