Anyone ever had hardwood floors refinished?

[luvmylittleboy2003]

We are looking at having the hardwood floors throughout the whole house refinished, how big of a mess does this make (with the sanding, etc) and any other advice/tips would be great! Thanks a bunch

 

[wdwmom2]

I didn't have it done, but BIL did. The sander had some type of vac attached to it to cut down on the dust. But believe me, there was still dust!!! His floors look beautiful though.

 

[Doe]

It's dusty but I think well worth it! We (well dh) refinished the hardwood floors in our first house. Wouldn't hesitate to do it again. Good luck!

 

[asta]

We did this a couple of years ago. To be honest, the dust wasn't as bad as I expected but the fumes were much worse. We moved all of the furniture out and sealed openings to the rest of the house with plastic. We were able to enter the master bedroom area (that is carpeted) via back door from the patio and stay off of the hardwood. I thought that we would be able to stay in that part of the house but there was no chance after getting the first smell of the chemicals used. We were in a hotel for two-three days.

I love the results and definitely think it is worth it. One small caution. We have a large light fixture in our front foyer that was wrapped in plastic to keep the dust off. The guys refinishing the floors left this light on and the plastic melted into the light bulbs. Just remind whoever is doing the job to turn the lights off.

 

[padams]

We also moved out while the floors were refinished because of the smell. A lot of dust... but it was worth it.

 

[XYSRUS]

We moved out too. The dust and fumes are too much!

 

[Green Tea]

We put all our belongings in storage and had this done. The result was beautiful but it would be tough to do this again.

How old is your house? If it is really old, you may want to have a board removed and checked for the depth. We did find that ours likely shouldn't have been sanded the last time; some nail tops showed after. The house was from the early 20's.

 

[Gigi22]

We had huge amounts of dust! I've never seen anything like it! Because DH has severe dust allergies, we moved out for the duration. We also moved our pets out of the house. FYI, in order to have the new finish dry, the contractors turned our furnace on, in August! The fumes were ugly too.

 

[kpm76]

We did it while remodeling our kitchen so the house was a mess anyway. We were already moved out due to the kitchen but even if we were not, we would have had to find a place to stay for 2 or 3 days.....we have a 2 yr old too so that makes a difference because it's hard to tell them to stay off all the floors.....actually, it's impossible, nobody can stay off all the floors for 3 days

 

[momsully]

We are looking at having the hardwood floors throughout the whole house refinished, how big of a mess does this make (with the sanding, etc) and any other advice/tips would be great! Thanks a bunch

Depending on how bad the floors are you might look at "screen and coat". We have done this a few times and it does a great job without the dust.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We had our terrazzo floors refinished and while not wood and while they used water to cut down on dust, it still made a huge mess.

Having any floors done, I would do one room at a time and make sure the people doing the job can also move furniture. We relocated much furniture to our back porch and the rest just danced around room to room. It was a week of torture. Nothing we had to wait for to dry and nothing stinky--but probalby would have been better to gotten a hotel for a week.

But sometimes if you want nice floors, you must suffer a little.

 

[luvmylittleboy2003]

Ok....so how did you guys fix the 'dust' issues once you moved back in? Did you have to wipe the walls down, clean the vents, blinds, etc????