Who knows about re-finishing HW Floors?

[Papa Deuce]

Here is my sitaution. I have HW floors which are in pretty bad shape in the kitchen. There are areas that you can no longer see the correct color of the wood. And there are a few small spots where the floor is worn looking, but not as bad as the areas that you can't see the original color.

What needs to be done? And, is it expensive? All together we have about 500 SF of HW floors.

 

[dg39]

You need to call a floor refinisher. They come in and sand down the floor with a sanding machine. You would need to cover everything as the dust gets all over. When they're done sanding, they'll put a few coats of polyeurethane on the floors. They come out pretty good in the end. Depending on the weather it can take anywhere from 1 day or so to thoroughly dry. We had this done years ago in our old house. I don't remember what it cost us, it was tooo long ago.

 

[KarenB]

We had our living room (13x21), Dining room (12x10 approx) and hallway redone this summer. We had a person come in and do it while we were on vacation. It was a lot of work. You really have to pack as though you are moving-curtains/blinds down, pictures off the wall, closets emptied. We wanted to have the three bedrooms done as well, but I just didn't have the energy to pack up the entire ground level of the house (we live in a ranch). I love the finished result. The person we hired sanded it to the wood's natural state and coated it with 3 layers of a satin finish. It really looks great. I would consider having the three bedrooms done next summer although I am still finding dust from this past refinishing!! PM me if you want any other details.

Karen

 

[MosMom]

We have a front room and entryway of our house to do as well and I was also curious about the cost of it.

 

[popeyeohoh]

My dh refinished 2 bedrooms, a dining room and living room all by himself. If you are a handy guy you can do it yourself. My husband had never done it before and he did a nice job.

 

[castleview]

My husband had never done it before and he did a nice job.

That's impressive. I was told by some very handy people, that it was very easy to put a welt or two in the floor.

Anyway, about six years ago, we refinished the floors in our old home. It was about 500 square feet. The contractor had to sand it twice because of the previous owners cats and put down two layers of a glossy polyurethane to handle our dogs paws. It cost around $900 which I thought was a great price - the floors were absolutely gorgeous.

The only drawback was that I was cleaning sawdust out of all the crevices until the day I left that house!

 

[aprilgail2]

I had a room done recently it was 10x 12 vand it was 250.00..our living room is 20 x 15 and that one cost 450.00. We just moved all the furniture and everything else out of the room, the guy taped plastic up on all doorways leading out of the room so that the sawdust would stay in that one room and he sanded and polyed the first day, the next day he comes back, sands again and polys again. We stayed at a hotel for 2 nights since it REALLY REALLY stunk in here! He really cleaned up nicely though, wasn't to bad at all...he even wiped all the walls down and vacuumed up the sawdust in the radiators and window sills.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

We would like to have our entryway (large area) redone and then the carpet in our living and dining rooms pulled up and new wood floors put in there.

Problem is we have cats and dogs and couldn't do it with them in the house.

I'm assuming that we wouldn't be able to lock the cats in another area of the house and bring the dogs to a hotel. For those of you who have had this done do you think that is possible or does the smell permeate the whole house?

 

[ElizK]

DH and I did the entire house when we bought our first house. What a lot of work (and huge mess)! They turned out gorgeous, though. My brother rented a floor sander from Home Depot when he did his. He did a good job, too. You can do it on your own. Just be prepared for the hard work and lots of dust. Be sure you cover all doorways into the room with plastic to keep the dust from the rest of the house, and be sure to wear a dust mask.

Ugh. Just remembering all that... we refinished in August in Texas... with no air conditioning, and a radio that was stuck on top-10 station. I still associate the song "Don't Worry -Be Happy" and "Drive" and "Every Rose has a Thorn" (or something like that). Hate those songs to this day.

 

[Want2liveatWDW]

I just had 800 sf of hardwood sanded, stained and polyurethaned in Sept.
They even fixed a few places where it separated and sanded out a few stains (which I didn't think was possible). It cost us $ 1800 and change including taxes. It was like $1.60 a sf + 30 cents a SF extra for stain.
BTW they turned out beautiful.

 

[aprilgail2]

We would like to have our entryway (large area) redone and then the carpet in our living and dining rooms pulled up and new wood floors put in there.

Problem is we have cats and dogs and couldn't do it with them in the house.

I'm assuming that we wouldn't be able to lock the cats in another area of the house and bring the dogs to a hotel. For those of you who have had this done do you think that is possible or does the smell permeate the whole house?

It smelled everywhere in the house...we boarded the dog while we had it done.

 

[Want2liveatWDW]

It smelled everywhere in the house...we boarded the dog while we had it done.

I must agree with the smell. We went away for the weekend and boarded the dog. It took a day or 2 of the windows open for the smell to dissapate.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

It smelled everywhere in the house...we boarded the dog while we had it done.

That's what I figured. Ugh! Boarding the dogs or bringing them to a hotel isn't too bad, but our cats will be a pain. Something we'll have to decide to do and then just do it, I suppose.

 

[golfgal]

We had hardwood in the tv room, guest bedroom and hallway on the main floor of this house. We added matching hardwood in the living room and dining room. The total cost was about $5000 for everything. It was about $650 for the spare bedroom 12x14 room. That is the only room I know how much it cost individually because we were going to carpet that room but the rest of the floors were looking so nice we changed our mind.

We were able to have to floors done before we moved in. The installer guy had the vacuums on his sanders so it wasn't THAT messy. It was dusty but not horrible. If you have it done I would throw some sheets over your furniture and if you have a lot of knick-knacks that would be a pain to dust I would put them away, but it wasn't worth packing up your house. I love our wood floors.

 

[disneygals]

We had our first floor redone years ago for $1600. It really improves the look of your house. I thought it would make everything else look bad, but it doesn't.

This is my advice, have them do one more coat than they recommend. You do have to move everything, it smells, so you might as well pay a little extra then.